Treading Old Ground
by l'amour-the-poet
Summary: Imagine that the one memory, the one element that shaped you into who you are, vanished completely. Imagine that all the choices you've made suddenly made no sense. This is Chloe on a quest to be whole again. Chloe/Davis, Post-Abyss.
1. prologue

* * *

Treading Old Ground

_**Author's Notes: **This labor of love was a result of repeated viewings of the episode Abyss. (The episode was a treasure trove for angst.) It deals with Chloe actually noticing something off about her memories. C'mon. She's Chloe. She should have noticed something. And it probably wouldn't have been all that easy for plot is my attempt at dealing with the question of what Chloe would have done._

_This is an attempt at an epic series, or an interconnected thread of one shots. This is my first fanfic ever, technically second, but I was ten at the time, and...that is my only excuse for excessively odd writing._

_It occurred to me you might want to know about pairings._

_**Pairings: **__Chloe/Davis, shades of Chloe/Clark and *greentinge* Chloe/Jimmy._

_**Disclaimer:** I do not have the magical PS3/SWF-ing powers of the owners of Smallville. I did not create the red-and-blue-blur. I have no claim on any characters herein, only the rantings of my brain. And I did not write the anvil-dropping travesty that was Bride, thank god. _

* * *

_Do not go gentle into that good night,_

_...burn and rave at close of day;_

_Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_Though wise men at their end know dark is right,_

_Because their words had forked no lightning they_

_Do not go gentle into that good night._

_...._

_Dylan Thomas- Do Not Go Gentle..._

She wakes up at four A.M. and thinks it's worse this time around. It was bad enough to start losing it all the first time, (the memories, faces-everything going blank in her mind). But then she knew that there was something terrible happening, something with an explanation.

Her best friend (Clark) said that there was something terribly wrong with her. She believed him then. It felt like she knew why.

And then inexplicably, it was fixed. Deux-Ex-Machina. Davis took her to the apartment, took her back to Clark and Jimmy and gave her a sedative.

Then she woke up (alone with them). She remembered things strangely, just like that, it was all back. (She knew there was no magic injection. She had checked the needle in the wastebasket. it was common enough, just some kind of benzodiazepine from Davis's coat.)

Clark said he was glad she was okay. She had smiled brightly, and teased him. And she thought that there something off about him somehow. Maybe it was his slightly wan smile, the one that didn't reach his eyes. She wished that he would really smile. One of those smiles that really lit up his whole face. One of those smiles she used to love so much.

Maybe he just had a bad day. A friend going crazy? That could qualify as a bad day. But deep down, she doesn't believe the look on his face and she doesn't know why.

She's losing her mind again, she knows. She's losing it slower, more subtly than before. She remembers specifics now. It's the bigger picture that is off. The larger pieces of who she is - those lovely intangibles that don't ...fit...quite right.

She thinks that maybe that's how it started with her mother. Maybe, she didn't lose her all at once, little parts of her crumbled away until there was nothing but a shell. Maybe the meteors were affecting her too. Just like that.

She feels like one of those borgs. Her best friend, her fiance… They look at her and smile like they expect something from her. Sweetness. Light. Snark. She plays along.

And she knows she loves them. (Not like that the first time...she couldn't feel.) She also knows that this isn't all that it should be. She feels like everything is just kind of feelings, the thoughts, are like simulations. She feels them, but she doesn't feel connected.

She hates the journalistic idea of having to know why everything adds up sometimes, but it's all that she has left to think of. She needs it. She can never answer that question.

Maybe her madness started in little bits and pieces-little by little, even before now. She'd just made choices at the drop of a hat. Maybe her logic had been the first thing to go.

She has no job now. She'd been a counselor. Now she wasn't.

She'd quit reporting. True, her expose' on meteor freak experiments had been terrifying. Sure she had been fired by the Planet. But she had loved journalism. Really loved it. She could have found work elsewhere, some other less prestigious newspaper, writing in the basement, again.

Chloe Sullivan, Investigative Reporter. That had been her byline. It made her happy. It made her real. She'd stopped. (Why had she stopped?)

She wishes she could tell Davis about this. She thinks he would understand. But she knows it wouldn't be right. Not after what he'd said. Not after what she'd said. Not if she was going to go through with everything else.

She knows she's getting married this next week.

"I just want to marry the man I love." she tells the mirror and hopes it is the truth.

Jimmy, a sweet boy- the man that cares for her a lot. She thinks that he was the first one to love her when Clark would not. Not that way.

Clark had loved someone else. Lana. Her friend. Beautiful and broken and the perfect girl next door. They hadn't worked out. Secrets? Yes, she thinks it was secrets. Only, Clark Kent didn't have any secrets. He was as wholesome... as any farm boy was. She didn't think he was wild deep down. Maybe it was her. In most of the memories she recalls, he is always with her. They mostly talk. Inane conversations she can't remember exactly.

Why was he around her so much? Maybe her feelings hadn't been so one sided.

Maybe she was the secret...

Jimmy! He thought so. He felt insecure, when he had seen that closeness between her and Clark. She doesn't think that those feelings have gone away-not entirely.

Now she and Jimmy are getting married. She thinks she loves him.

Being near him doesn't hurt like she's hurt twice in her life. She remembers that before him love burned her up and hurt like healing (when she could). (It hurt before, with Clark, but why?)

She's never seen Jimmy looking quite so lost like Davis (like her). She doesn't feel like trying to pull the pain? fear? out of his eyes when he looks at her, or like forgetting there is anyone else in the room but him. She doesn't feel that pain in her gut, watching his retreating back and trying to believe that feeling that connected them was never 'this'.

She doesn't feel sad because she'll never take that leap, and never know.

She has Jimmy. Jimmy is safe, dependable. (He almost acts like she's the only woman there is. Almost.) She's been hoping to grow into him.

Now she doesn't know if she can. Why is she doing this to him? Will he still love her when she starts to lose him again? She imagines herself married, in five years time. She tries to imagine what it would be like with him.

She'd always thought she'd want children. A girl and a boy. Someday. If she had them, would she forget why she loved them too? Would she forget they were human and breakable like her mother did?

She remembers herself (younger, smaller). She remembers her hands- washing them, washing them until they dripped red. Her mother couldn't help it. It was the id and the meteors.

Chloe knows she's been infected. It doesn't matter that the powers are gone. (Why are they gone? Just leaving all this madness in her head?) She could be like her mother in five years time.

She may be mad, but she will not show that madness to anyone else. Not to her friend, not to Jimmy, not to her children-that-do-not-exist.

She might lose everything. Not today, or tomorrow, maybe. But eventually. She can't just be fixed.

She still wants to fix herself. But then it hurts and she just can't think anymore about this.

She tries not to. She simply walks out on the porch, lost in the folds of her floppy green gown and tries looking out. It's still dark, the sky in hues of grayish purple. She finds herself inexplicably expectant, preparing for a rush of wind to hit her in the face.

_Ridiculous. _She thinks. There are few strong winds in Smallville.

It always comes down to Smallville.

She's grown up here. She's lived here. She's losing it here.

Then she thinks of what Lois said, half in jest. "You should come to visit Metropolis. We should have a bachelorette week."

Lois, of course, would say that. It would not be enough for it to be a bachelorette party complete with flirty men, dirty dancing and beer. No. A bachelorette week.

"It's your last free week ever. You can crash at my apartment. We can catch up and you can be crazy Chloe again. Not Suzy-homemaker."

She'd told Lois she was busy with the wedding planning. (It had been only half true.) She'd been so sure, then, that everything was fine. That the last thing she needed was to run away for a little while.

The invitations to the wedding are all done now. The location is selected. Everything is ready. And now she needs to get away. She has one week to put herself together. If listening to arena rock all day is the price she pays... she thinks it might be worth it.

In half an hour she's texted Lois, and packed and ready to go. In three hours Lois will be here, she thinks.

She looks at Jimmy, snoring softly, stretched out over her spot in the bed. She sits and waits until he wakes up.

She knows what she will say. "I'm keeping with tradition." She'll tell him."You said it was bad luck for the groom to see the Bride before the wedding. I'm just making doubly sure there won't be any black cats or government agents in attendance."

He'll smile boyishly, and it'll make her feel something like guilt.

She won't tell him that she's falling apart. She won't say that she needs to put herself together again.

_Rage, rage against the dying of the light._

_

* * *

  
_

_Questions. Comments? Critiques? Devious plots?_

_If you have the time, 'leave your contribution in the little box'. (Catch that reference? The bird hat. Labyrinth!) I will be writing responses to feedback in my livejournal account, due to a restriction on responding here on ff.n. If you want to hear my ravings feel free to click the link on my profile._

_That's it for now. Me signing out!_


	2. in my silence I'd love to forget

_**Now fixed. My apologies, but somehow the first chapter got reposted into the second. Sorry about that, all.**_

Here is the missing Chapter: with Lois and Chloe's interactions, a very messy situation and Chloe's reporter instincts.

* * *

Lois had taken the day off.  
They had walked a few blocks, going in and out of stores, fussing over clothes (silky blouses for Lois, pant suits for her). They'd chatted comfortably about sale signs and pop culture, carrying bruising bags in their fingers. Chloe has missed this easiness for a while.

Now Chloe is sitting in some café or another, waiting for Lois to get her order. She sips at the ginger frappoccino and grimaces. It's not bad, not at all. But she remembers this is the drink she ordered, sitting across from Lex after releasing the story that sent his father to court.  
It had been her first forage into the world of power struggles and manipulation. Her first deal with the devil. She can see white bedding and masks and needles; and thinks it never ended there.

She really loathes the ginger in the frappucino.  
If she were able to do that (trace the direction) for each memory, each choice she's made, it would be so much easier. Chloe likes lists. She keeps so many in her desk she doesn't know what to do with. Each choice must have an origin, a climax, an ending.  
She pulls out the napkin and starts doing this. Writing words with no connection.  
Unfortunately for her, Lois has just figured the ins and outs of artichoke sandwiches.

"Yo. Earth to cuz."  
She reaches across the table and pokes her with the straw.  
"You're not getting all broody on me again? I might as well ask the boss out to lunch for that."

"I've never though I had a brood-able face. It must be the ginger in here. I hate the stuff.  
You're aching to tell me, aren't you? I'll bite. Why is Perry broody?"

"We've got a new addition. He's not exactly the team player. Perry says he's crass and unprofessional.  
He's some new kid with a pet project. Reporter, out of Yale. Thinks that he might prevent a nuclear war or something. The meteor mutants are his warheads…and … you get the picture. He's trying to find meteor infected with more than just one power.  
Is that even possible?"  
Lois hesitates.  
"He's been annoying me to get on the project with him. It's not like I'm scared, or opposed to anything covert, but I'm not going to do a crap project."  
Chloe thinks she out to be playing the protector. This guy could be the robotic arm of another Lex. He could find…too much…  
She feels an ache coming on. No one person could handle more than one power. One makes basket cases enough.  
"Probably crap." Chloe agrees.  
Before they leave she stuffs the napkin in her pocket.

* * *

Lois has an apartment smaller than her and Jimmy's double.  
It feels like there is more room, though.. Less boxes with cameras, and no photographs lining every wall.  
She has a spare bed to sleep in, and it's surprisingly neat.  
She could use a nap. It lasts about two minutes before she gets poked in the ear.  
Don't you laze up on me.  
There's Lois, with a short black skirt and a beehive on her head.  
"We've got a town to hit. You're going to be gorgeous."  
She can hear Love Bites cranked up to twenty.  
"What about some Hairspray?"

* * *

It all would have been great, she muses, if Ollie hadn't shown up.  
Lois (understandably) got sidetracked and Chloe wound up sitting at the bar, drinking a glass of water.  
No friendly bartenders here, no advice for-hey my brain is freaky. Guy didn't even offer ice.  
The fourth time she had to tell an overly gregarious drunk she was a Lesbian she decided it was time to move on out.  
(Those two were probably going to need the apartment later anyway.)  
She left a note with the dull-eyed barkeep and went for a walk.

* * *

Not a smart move, probably. Actually, a stupid move because the heels are pinching up to her ankles. She doesn't try and get the logistics of that.  
It's good to know that she's not stumbling drunk despite the two beers and the water.

The problem is, seems like she's the only sober one.  
Some spaces ahead of her she can hear a helpful passerby shaking some squatter awake. It's just behind some vehicle, loud enough to hear.  
"I think it's illegal to sleep on public benches, man. What are you doing?  
Shift's over, anyway. You alright? Are you drunk? Sick?"

"Ahm. Just a head ache. You can just go ahead without me."

"Woah there. You're in no condition to stay here. You don't look fit to drive. What's with the eyes?  
I know the doc in my apartment building.  
Give me your arm, easy does it."

"Keep away! Whatever you do, don't touch me. "

"Just relax. Something's hit you hard."

"I think you should get out of here." The voice sounds awfully familiar. There's something progressively weird about the vowel sounds, like the switch of a record to slow speed.

"What the hell?!"

"Please get away from me!"  
There's an ambulance, the same numbers she memorized while they were watching the feed from the cameras, with the mysterious terror and the vanishing meteor freaks. She'd know Davis's numbers anywhere.

_I think I might be the killer.  
How can you explain the blackouts, the blood? _

She's counted thirty seconds. No movement. She sighs. Maybe it's just a really bad case of the non-coffee syndrome.  
She can't mistake what she hears next.

There's scrabbling. An unsettling rippling, ripping noise, a thunk….. She knows the sound of an inert body hitting pavement.  
She's too close to it. If there's anymore thunking, she'll be in the thick of it.

He reporter sense urges her to stick it out. She needs to know if, it is in fact Davis, or she's going to be living with this thing handing there for the rest of her life.  
One of them could be Davis. She must know for sure.  
_I feel like you were sent to me._

She might not be the guardian angel, but she'll be able to look him in the eyes and confirm or deny it all.  
She knows why she's doing this.  
She's never known what is good for her.

* * *

She's already unsteady in the heels, so she pitches herself forward, rolling into the puddle of red, feeling the warmth, the grit on her knees.  
She can't find Davis right away. In the dark she can see a dark-haired man in an EMTs uniform crumpled right ahead of her.  
Her stomach sinks, and she pretends its because of the nauseating smell of blood. All she can think is to roll the body.  
She can see the blood gushing from the neck-that-is-not-Davis's. The man's dead.

Davis was right all along.  
She wonders how this could be, that someone so fixed on being a savior can be this too. She wonders if he'll see them when he wakes up. She wonders what he'll do.  
Don't look up. Don't look up. She doesn't see Davis, can't look back with her answer.

The eyes she sees are beady and red, set in a gray face, a body like a spiny hulk (the abomination, her stunned brain corrects her).  
It's the meteor rocks. It's always the meteor rocks.

Large, clawing…protrusions move as it scuttles forward.  
She can barely hear it.

"Chloe??"  
The voice? is like a hoarse shattering of glass. It's trying to touch her face.  
She clutches the bloody emts arm to her chest like a rag doll and pretends she's not crying.

"This is what it does to us."

More is dripping down her face, onto the ruined uniform and she suddenly can't open her throat.  
It hurts more than the first time.

* * *


	3. all you know seems so far away

_Re-treading Old Ground_

_**Disclaimer:** My only claim is on my own ideas thank you very much. If the PS3 would like to listen...however... I'd just be thrilled. :P  
_

* * *

He opens his eyes in the alley. Same way as before, bile rising in his throat. He realizes it's a cliché but he's failed again.  
Perhaps not completely.  
A few feet away he can see the bloody footprints where someone has walked away. He's never seen anyone, any footprints, but he's known. He'd only hoped that he'd been too weak to do much damage.

Not now, now that he's been tested. He might be slicing into …. people... with his brain. He doesn't know how where the blood comes from, because he's taken anything lethal out of his vicinity, out of the ambulance, out of his apartment...  
There's too much blood.

He knows he must have assaulted someone, far worse than the 411s he gets called to with enraged drunks. What kind of monster is he? To leave that much blood it must have been the carotid artery he severed (they'd be dead).  
Another major one and they would have collapsed at least. They were probably bleeding out at this very moment, a few steps away.  
His ambulance is still there. Maybe, if he can get them onto the stretcher, to the hospital he can hand them off to a medic.

(Maybe he can stop it, and go somewhere with no people, where he can't hurt any one like this.)

There's a broken shoe, a woman's, with velvet straps, lying in the puddle. The prints walking away are a man's.  
A hand, open on the pavement in front of the wheels of his ambulance. A woman laying not too far from the bloodied footprints.  
He thinks maybe his mind is giving him weird nightmarish visions, because she's looks so familiar.

Closer it's unmistakably Chloe- the blond hair, the straight profile, the way the daring red dress is kept modest by a loose sweater.  
_Slow down, don't breathe to fast or you could pass out._

Not her. She's just lying there, too serene to be quite human, whole and resplendent and so real he could cry. Red caked with mud brown…  
We'll find who did these killings, Davis.  
She was so sure… And now she can't tell him this isn't real, that this isn't him.

He knows she can't be dead. Not like this.

Chloe's more permanent than that. She'd never give up on living. She'd throw herself into defense, she'd fight.  
That's probably how the heel broke. She must have...

He starts chest compressions  
_Move. Move, dammit!_  
He still can't make her breathe. He knows-he's done it hundreds of times. For each hour after death, on a night like this, the body drops a degree. She's too cold.  
He pulls her into his lap.

He can't breathe right, can't stop trembling.  
He can only think the words. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry... _  
He can tear the ambulance to shreds, he can demolish everything around him... he can't bring her back.

Is that what that strange alien thing wanted? To cut his ties? To evolve him into a thing with nothing at all?  
Without Chloe he's not Davis anymore.

(He's something less…a dossier of papers…a list of foster homes, a black plastic bag with shoes and a shirt and a broken lunchbox, and a hope for something that can't be.)  
He could keep it together. It didn't matter if she married the wrong man, or several, he could wait.  
As long as she was in the world it was worth holding onto.

Now he feels it, there in the gateway of his mind. There just waiting to take control again, to cause chaos, to make the pain stop.  
You haven't the right. You killed her. His mind screams at that thing inside.

He needs to hold onto the pain. Chloe's not coming back.  
He's not allowed to cry.  
He allows himself the fantasy. Imagines turning himself in at a high walled prison, breaking out of this cycle he's in. If he could only hold on long enough to be taken apart, kept separate, each piece of him locked in a steel box, burned. He couldn't possibly regenerate from cremation...could he?

He needs it to end now, but there's no one he can trust.  
There was a moment when she said she could trust only him. She didn't realize that it went both ways, he's only trusted her ever since then.  
No one else could see the truth.  
If he begged to be locked up, announced everything he was…He'd stay in a jail cell until it came out again. Worse, stronger than ever.  
Chloe could have done it, but there won't ever be another Chloe.

She had cared. Maybe he hadn't been her whole world except for that little while, but she'd seen something worth saving.  
He can't let go of that. He won't.

He can do this one last thing for her. He can hold on.  
(But how can it matter when he can still see the trail running down to the dress, her closed eyelids, dark circles…)

_You're really leaping out on a limb for me.  
If what they say is true and fools do rush in, I have definitely earned the mantle of village idiot on this one._  
It matters.

He cradles the back of her head, feeling no blood trickle down his fingers. And he thinks of the sad corner in her smile, burning her image into his mind…trying to remember the scent of coffee and freesia...

* * *

_**Questions. Comments? Critiques? Devious plots? Something to debate me on?  
**_

_**Same old drill. I will give you virtual French toast! ;)  
**_


	4. turn me off for just a second, please

_**Disclaimer:** yata, yata...My only claim is on my own ideas, thank you very much. If the PS3 would like to listen...however... I'd just be thrilled. :P_

_...So then I had an epiphany. Today is Christmas, you all are awesome. And I can't just leave off with Chloe dead. On that note... Next chapter!_

* * *

She's learned never to move when she breathes again.  
It's not quite like waking from sleep, more like being comatose. She remembers the feeling from the experiments in the lab.  
It used to be warmer there. Hard palettes, cold stinging needles, some of the dead meteor infected laid across her. Small kids, just starting to manifest. The tears were an automatic reaction.

But now she's curled up, somewhere cold, her arms aren't strapped this time. There's someone else, breathing unevenly underneath her ear. Her instincts tell her hit hard if she needs to and get herself into a corner she can defend.  
But then she remembers she's not that Chloe anymore, and that she shouldn't even be alive right now.

_Heels._

She'd gone with Lois to a bar, she'd left. She'd walked, heard an argument. She'd seen what Davis became kill a man. She'd cried.  
And now she was alive again.  
Logically, this other person lying on the concrete was either Davis or the man she'd saved.

She hopes that it's Davis. She doesn't really want to explain being a less hairy version of Wolverine or running from a witch hunt complete with pitchforks this early.  
Its early, they're near ambulances. There's too much blood on the pavement and there will be a lot to explain. She expects to see a disturbing headline in tomorrow's paper. She'd rather they leave photographers out of it.  
She-they need to get out of here.  
She hopes Davis? won't freak when she covers his mouth and hauls them out of there.  
She twitches her finger, experimentally. He can pick up on that. The next few seconds fear like years. His breathing becomes stranger and she thinks his arms gather him to his chest, uncomfortably tight.  
He sees her open her eyes, runs a hand down her face and hugs her hard. She can hear his heartbeat, and a trembling that's not quite normal, even for when you see the dead come alive.  
He's not Clark. He doesn't ask what happened. He grabs her and no one notices when they go, limping and straggling out of the lot like so many wounded.

His apartment has three locks on the door.  
He bolts them shut before he stares at her. "You don't have to tell me that didn't happen, because I'm very glad it did.  
You were dead."  
He resists the urge to repeat the word, accusingly.

She's rubbing her hands over her blood speckled sleeves, trying to get warm. He'd stopped turning the heat on after the first time he died.  
He wishes he could hug her again, but doubts he should under the circumstances.

She hates this part, not knowing what to say.  
"Hey. It was only temporary." She moves to pat him on the shoulder, and he steps back again.  
"You've seen what I am. I….I k-murdered you."

"Actually you turned into the hulk and shish-kabobbed your work buddy. I just brought him back to life."  
He just looks at her, not understanding how she can hear something like 'murdered' and reply with pop culture references. He's not dreaming this for sure. In his nightmares she screams at him.

"You didn't kill me. Your alter ego got said my name and tried to pet me, my tear ducts acted up, and Mr. dead guy walked off.  
Guy didn't know what happened to him. It was a mind whammy. He probably thought he was the one with the blackouts.  
In case you didn't notice, I'm meteor infected, too. Or I was, wasn't and am again. It's complicated.

That counselor thing? I really knew where those kids were coming from."

It doesn't make sense.

"There was dried blood on your neck. Lots of it."  
"That's my power. I cry on people who are nearly dead, take on their injuries when they wake up, I die for a little while and wake up again. Hurts some but that's it. It makes me hungry, tired and grumpy. Can I have a seat?"

Typical.

In two minutes, she coaxes him into sitting two seats away on the couch, conveniently ignoring the fact that he's half dressed.  
It's easier for him to breathe again, and the feeling gets pushed back a little more.  
She notices this.  
"That's why you carry sedatives with you everywhere. You take more than one of them, don't you?"  
Davis doesn't answer right away.  
"A cocktail of those could kill you." She says.  
"Actually, I'm pretty sure it can't."  
"How many?"

She's just that persistent.  
"You're not doing yourself any favors. You're developing a resistance. Just faster than usual. I'm the same way with anesthesia."  
"Not just the antibiotics. Last month your cousin stabbed me."  
"Lois?"  
"She said she was my mother. That I needed to evolve." Chloe knows she should know something about this. Lois, maybe, has a mutation like Davis's that triggers splits. She thinks life has just gotten a lot more complicated.

"Can't say I don't see a resemblance. You're both stubborn as mules."  
"I've kind of developed a resistance." He tells her.  
He thinks that in one day with her, he would tell her everything he's never ever said, even though he knows that end of this night she's going to leave and he'll never say a word.

He's so tired of hiding this. He doesn't think he can.

"I'll be right back," he says.  
He takes out the last knife in the house from the safe.  
"Just so you know I'm on the level, this is my last steak knife. I'm going to miss it." He angles it toward his chest.  
"Davis, Don't." She looks like she wants to knock it out of his hands. Still wants to protect him.  
That's just the way she is.  
Before she can get any closer he rams it into his chest and it shatters into pieces on the tile.

"That's the resistance."  
"No shit, Sherlock."  
"So what about those sedatives?"

She makes a face between a laugh and a smirk that he's always found amazingly sweet and exasperating at the same time.  
"Throw them away."  
"Excuse me?"  
"They're not doing you any good. They haven't had any effect since the first time you used them. Empty effort. You've gotta pick your battles. Like, right now.  
I intend to challenge you for your shower."

Davis really, really shouldn't think of Chloe and showers in the same sentence. He knows it just deadened his brain, because he knows he should let her out the door and tell her to get away from him.  
She'll eventually leave anyway.

"You don't have to do this. You shouldn't do this. You should go."  
"Think with something other than your sense of angst, please. It's practical. I'm staying with Lois.  
Even if she was your mother for a while, I really don't think she and her sort-of-boyfriend want me showing myself into the apartment like this. It's not Halloween. I can't exactly say I had a hot date with Mike Myers."

That he can understand. Maybe, he can manage. She's already found the bathroom.  
"Hey Davis, do you have a shirt I can borrow?"

He leaves a soft gray shirt right next to the sink. It hits Chloe just how incredibly intimate it is.  
She's wearing his shirt, and it hits her about mid-thigh. There's not really much left to the imagination.  
She almost wishes he had hugely hulking stature like Clark, or that he had less fashion sense. She thinks she'd miss both those things about him.  
But the shirt is really…really…  
The one time she did this with Jimmy (with a scratchier, longer shirt of his), he'd drooled. Well maybe not drooled in the dog sense of the word, but he had looked awfully pleased. Like a cat licking its whiskers, or marking its territory. She doesn't know why she never did it again.  
There's no such problem with Davis. He stiffens for a short moment and then really looks sad.

When he heads to the shower, she builds a fort of pillows straight down the center of the bed. She won't let him take the floor or the couch.  
"You haven't been sleeping."  
"I can't control what happens in my sleep."  
"Not an unfounded assumption, since the blackouts are usually triggered by darkness."  
"But it's starting earlier. Last time was too early. You do remember I killed someone."  
"It did. They came back to life."  
"Haven't you ever thought your blackouts might get more frequent without sleep?  
It doesn't matter if you're invulnerable and literally have abs of steel, or some such configuration. You are human. You have to sleep.  
Give me your hand. You morph the same way, I suppose. When you start to change, the spikes will cut though my hand.  
"I'll hurt you."  
"Haven't you heard those catchphrases? Beauty is pain. Success is pain. Life is pain.  
Only death is not really pain, just more like a coma."  
Chloe stops mid-rant.

"What happened?"  
"You know, I realized you're the only other person I can talk to about being dead. The only one besides me, I guess."  
Something lingers in the back of her mind, but this time she doesn't mind ignoring it.

She snatches his fingers and doesn't let go. He doesn't fight her.

* * *

_**Questions. Comments? Critiques? Devious plots? Something to debate me on?**_

_**Does the banter work or is it stilted?  
**_

_**Same old drill. I will reply to thank you and/or talk your ear off, if you want. If I talk too much just say *christo*. Not that it'll exorcise me or anything, but it counds awesome. :)

* * *

  
**_


	5. all of the things I want you to know

Merry-Post Christmas! :)

* * *

It's nothing like a scene from a romance novel. Her arm ends up half tucked behind her back, her fingers curled around his, and she thinks one of her arms is going to be numb until tomorrow.

She knows he's stayed awake most of the night, but for this moment he's dead to the world. She rejoices in her small victory.

Scarcely an hour later, he is awake.

Chloe doesn't know what he eats. The coffee is easy enough to find. There is one cupboard, mostly empty with three tins. _Starbucks, Starbucks…_

Davis comes into the room, picks up an empty cup and watches her drink her coffee.

She's not used to this. It's like he's waiting for to prove something to him, by running off screaming for the door. In some ways, she thinks, this could be turn into the most awkward morning after conversation ever.

"I killed you. _I killed you._ You fixed me coffee."

"So I take it you don't want cream with that."

He never was one to let things lie. Never, ever. Not even if it meant just cruising along in the moment. Not if it meant being able to stare at each other a moment longer-glossing over her neatly constructed engagement, or this weird easiness between them that's curiously absent now.

It all _had _to be out in the open.

"I thought we covered that. It was indirect and you weren't yourself, yesterday. You weren't cognizant."

"We can never cover that. Maybe I didn't hurt you that time, but I could have. I saw your blood everywhere and its not something I want to see again."

"I'm sorry."

"You are not apologizing. Don't do that. It's me that turns into that..."

"I know that. Can't say I wasn't…unnerved, Davis…"

He's put on his squinting, perceptive face again.

"Fine. I was scared for all of twenty seconds. But that doesn't negate the fact that it-as-you didn't kill me and managed not to go on a rampage. Why was that? It could've easily…"

"It was you. You're pretty hard to forget, even for psycho-monsters." That's almost a smile, there, for a millisecond before it's supplanted by a grimace.

"It doesn't change the fact that I turn into something destructive and evil. I tore apart that paramedic. I knew him."

"Know him."

"Right."

"We weren't best friends, but he told me about his wife. His two kids, asked me about what he should get them for their birthdays. If he wasn't, no one…you know… is safe from me.

The time may come when I can't even recognize you. Lois-she-said I was _evolving_. I may have to find a way to... "

(She wonders if he means an old-fashioned pyre, some noble and ridiculous plan of self-immolation.) He's not looking out her again, and she should have known he'd think of this. It's fatalistic, so out of place, and she knows that she will never be able to let it happen..

"Stop. You know, I've done… some research on this before the Isis foundation."

(Oh, it was pretty hands on stuff, that.)

"What you have seems to be a symptom of a meteor infection. We know the cause, and we can start finding a way to limit it."

"You've met many meteor infected people. They don't all kill everything in their paths."

"Excuse me. Bette? That other shadow mutant? Maybe they were selective, purposeful and aware murderers; but they didn't want to stop it. You do. Different ballpark.

Meteors mess everyone one up. You got a raw deal. It doesn't mean you have to jump into a nuclear reactor. Not the end of the w—of life as you know it.

You can stop this, partially. You didn't hurt me when you transformed. It was like you knew me. You held it off long enough for me to wake up again."

"Barely."

"You did. It can get better. Just needs some good solid research behind it. We're going to work this out. I'm kind of in permanently in between jobs in the moment, so time's not an issue..."

"You're not leaping out on a limb this time. You're climbing underneath a falling redwood. I don't think it can get better. I don't want to hurt you again."

"Don't go turning me into Saint Chloe yet, huh?"

She's not trying to make him think so. She may be doing something selfish here.

"You want logic. I'll give you logic. You need help. I can't be permanently hurt. I'm in the position to help you. You are my friend, no matter what's going on."

The word burns in her mouth, and she wonders why Clark's face flashes through her thoughts. Would he have stayed with her, talked to her if she'd had the courage to tell him? He couldn't have understood. He hadn't wanted her to tell Lois about the infection, like it was something dirty.

Davis is looking like he wants the floor to eat him up. But there's something like hope there.

"I'm not going to lose anymore friends to this."

Just like this, the struggle on his face ends.

"I know what you mean." He says.

He looks at her too perceptively and she wonders what he sees. It's like then, when he asked her about her and Jimmy. He could really push.

But that's it. She's gotten a get-out-of-jail-free-card today. He's almost…almost cracked a smile.

"You're amazing," He says.

_(…you save people's lives and…)_ It feels like the connection between the words is unraveling. She fights the urge to hit her forehead with the heel of her hand to stop it.

There is Davis. She thinks of how open his eyes are, how he is starting to look worried again.

"You look ill. I knew I should have let you sleep more…Are there side effects to the healing? Can I get you something? You must be so hungry! I've stopped getting food…" He looks so chagrined that his face is boyish

"I'm fine, Davis." She pillows her head on her arms and it's easier to grin again.

"Another cup and I'll be set. I've named myself your wing person now. Cheers on it?"

They clink empty mugs.

* * *

It's like on of those old dates you only read about. He walks her to Lois's door. Two steps to her left, two steps behind her.

He's moving stiffly. She nearly trips, in the overlarge shoes she's wearing. (His actually).

He grasps onto her quickly and she can feel the muscles in his arms to pulled taunt, in nervousness, fear...

"I think I'd better leave you here. Things could get awkward."

But she knows it's not just the idea of Lois. She doesn't think it has anything to do with Lois at all. It's him, afraid to go back to the ambulances to the people and to his job now that he knows what he could have done.

"Davis, you want to help them. Think of helping them."

She doesn't explain herself. Neither of them says the word goodbye.

* * *

She could use a third cup of coffee before confronting Lois. She mentally scans through the lists of things to say. None of them sounds good.

Lois opens the door in her scarlet! bathrobe and her *rabbit slippers*. (Bunny slippers aren't hard-nosed enough.)

"Chloe! Where have you been? "

She raises her eyebrows in what she thinks is a nonchalant gesture. It's a reporter's-woman's cardinal rule. When backed into a metaphorical corner, be cryptic. Lois knows it well.

"I knew it!" As she closes the door, Lois looks about ready to whoop. "It was a guy. My little cousin is growing up!"

Chloe can either confirm or deny it.

"It's not like that."

"So you both stayed up and waxed philosophical? You are so kinky. (Not that I'm judging or anything.)"

"He's a friend who offered to let me stay over for your benefit."

"What benefit?" It takes Lois a moment to follow.

"Oh. No. That is so not happening. The ship has sailed, sister. Oliver and I were just catching up. Not that I would mind..."

"See? Concerned friend."

"You are best friends with Clark. I'm pretty sure you don't sleep with him."

All she wants is coffees and her laptop, but Lois is currently in the way of both. Planted there as if she won't budge an inch from the counter unless she gets the scoop.

"I hope this isn't a technique you use at the Planet."

"I'll move when you give me something. Was it his Chevy Impala?"

"I'm not that shallow. I like my beetle!"

Lois shrugs her shoulder. (I think you're the only one..., sometimes.)

It's the opening she needs. "Hey!"

There, objective one accomplished. She's only got decaf, but it's something.

"Less shallow then… Deep soulful eyes? Velvet voice?

...Animal magnetism?"

Chloe chokes on her first sip.

"You could say that. You could definitely say that."

"You've got me now. Spill. Details. Now!"

"Not on your life."

"I won't tell a soul, scout's honor. Not even if it involves whipped cream."

"You weren't ever a girl scout. You insulted the guide and got kicked out, remember?"

"Fine. I won't tell. Jimmy, then."

"I'm going to be honest with Jimmy." Chloe tells her primly.

Well, she'll come as close as she can.

_Jimbo, I've decided to go help one of my friends control their psycho inner hulk, and I'm going to have to be around him 12 hours a day…. We're still on for the whole 'love above all others' next week, right?_

Maybe not.

"…I would think you understood the meaning of bachelorette week. Geesh."

* * *

I love feedback, as you all know. Thanks in advance if you do comment/critique/debate me on something. It will most likely result in a reply, increased productivity and a higher quality product. How's that for a sales pitch?


	6. wait for the night to conquer me

**_What can I say this time, Merry Pre-New Year?_**

* * *

She's got his files from those years still buried deep in her hard drive. Born October 16, 1987. She wonders if someone just randomly chose the date off of a wall calendar.  
It's still approximately two years before the first shower. Just like Clark, but without a nice farm in the middle of Smallville to keep him from the meteors.

She traces backwards from birth. Nothing has mysteriously appeared between 1 and 3 years of age. Maybe some sort of helpful individual searching for the boy's true family.  
Whatever it was, it appears to be better than the first home.  
The records dead end there. She doesn't need a picture to know it was in the slum-ish parts of Kansas. She's run into too many gang shooting articles there to ignore that.  
Maybe locations could jog Davis's memory. Maybe, but it's too slim of chance to risk everything on.  
Considering how street-wise she is, they'd go together. She and Davis aren't any condition for a road trip yet. If half of the gang population suddenly didn't show up…

There's not much on the home now. Just a name.  
_Randolph Beckett_, founder; posing by a sedan that looks far too luxurious for Nowhere-ville, Kansas.  
She doesn't read much into Siang Mien the Chinese art of reading faces like calligraphy, but she feels wary of him.  
He's got a slim, pockmarked face, well-groomed appearance, wide thin lips. Neither of these things are bad in and of themselves.  
It's the eyes that bother her. To amused, too empty?  
He reminds her of Lionel

She's really very glad that she kept her private detective account for tracing license plates.  
Either he'd had a DUI violation in Northern Florida two years back and various assault charges on his record or a petty thief had stolen his car.

The police mug shots are not impossible to find with a little string pulling.

It makes no sense, but it's unmistakably him. He's thinner and his eyes are no longer quite so unreadable. He looks hunted.  
She thinks about when Lionel was cuffed and led around by police officers and how his eyes remained filled with icy amusement.  
"What did you get yourself into, Beckett?"  
It's a rhetorical question, of course. She doesn't think she'll ever get to ask it.  
The trail goes cold after Florida. The car got impounded. And Beckett disappeared with it.

* * *

This time she refuses to go to the club. Seven p.m. may be too late.  
She tells Lois about some complex *confidential* journalism project she's working on. Lois doesn't question her.  
"I noticed by the way you snagged that Ethernet port."  
"Oops. I must be slipping. It's all yours."  
"I didn't mind. Who needs more of Kent's e-mails about 'How's Chloe?' (Should I say, knee deep in top secret shit?) Really, cuz, you look more like yourself this way.  
I told you should cut loose. Aren't you glad you listened to your big cousin? Tomorrow maybe you could make some time for the latest horrible rom-com and we can talk about more drastic ways of cutting loose--"  
"I'll see you, Lois!"  
This is the end of it for now.

* * *

At a quarter 'til, she finds Davis in the apartment, in rougher clothes than his uniform, curled into fetal position on the floor in the corner of the room. He's not undergoing any metamorphosis at the moment, but he looks like he's going into a fight.  
"Hey, Chloe." He says tightly.

It finally settles into her that she really doesn't have a plan for when/if it happens.  
Just… be there.  
She fills the space with words.  
"I don't the roof will be destroyed. I still hope you don't have nosy neighbors. "

*It* wasn't quite that tall.  
"I brought my laptop, a Zen meditation manual, a Hindi meditation manual, a book about chi, and a copy of the latest Hulk movie."

He looks genuinely puzzled. "I may have missed something, but what's that?"

"The hulk- you know-big, green…" She flounders for an explanation. "You never read comics as a kid?"  
"Not really. Most of them weren't too big on entertainment. Since I didn't stay for long, there wasn't really a point to it..."  
"Not even that family that kept you for twelve years?"  
"They kept a lot of us. They got payments but they didn't have the time to spend."

She'd known about his childhood, on some level, but never really thought about how many things were thrown off by it. Being alone was his entire world. He never got to talk like this. A boy without much that was his, no space for dreams, no childhood, not one person to talk about the blackouts... of course he would try and keep himself from getting hurt. Their relationship in itself is a miracle.

She wants to say I'm sorry. She never used to like to hear it from Clark when she was like that. She'd wanted something solid, she didn't know what.

"You have to watch it with me. No arguing. It has factual integrity. It'll get us on track. And we're going to be doing this ourselves, on some level."  
Her mind unwittingly conjures up that one scene she's heard about with Bette and Bruce, the one where they can't possibly get very far because he starts to shift…Thoughts like that will get her nowhere. T

"Davis, you can't watch from that corner."  
She's always been pretty hands-on. She's not going to stop now, however conflicted her thoughts may be, and as scared of hurting her as he is. She makes to tug him to the couch. He freezes as soon as she touches him.  
"Come on." There's no way she can move him unwillingly. She's considerably lighter, and he's got gravity on his side.

"I need the company. Proximity helps you. Are you honestly that worried about the cushions?"

"I don't need to watch from there. I'm less of a threat from here."

"It's part of the three-step-plan. Please."  
Maybe the cornering is a technique in itself. Kind of like, back to the wall, find a corner you can defend.

"You're afraid to be distracted when the shift starts?"

"I kind of have to focus on something."  
"There you go. You've got to have a focus, a memory or something. It's the basic tenet of one of the manuals. What was your focus? That wall? A stone? One good day you had?"

"You."

"Oh. Oh."  
He won't touch her, but when he looks at her like that she thinks he's doing much more. Chloe fights the urge to bite her lip and look away from his face. It's a habit, but he's always needed complete honesty between them, and she needs something she knows is real.

"I still think you should sit on the couch. You can watch me watch it. I'll tell you what happens, I watch you. All parties benefit."  
She talks him through one quarter of it before it starts.

* * *

She knows as soon as he starts to look pained. It looks as if something is working from within him, pulling, trying to twist his features into something else…  
"Chloe. Move. I think its starting…"

There are soldiers attacking the Hulk on the screen as Davis's jaw begins to stiffen and his eyes glaze over.  
She wonders if maybe-maybe that has something to do with it.

"Look at me. Hey, Davis. I can't help if you don't look at me."  
She had been expecting it, but not quite like this.  
His body is jerking slightly. It would look like epilepsy if the shirt wasn't pulled tight over the first of the spikes to pierce through it.

Chloe reminds herself that it'll be fine, that it can be done as the hand she's holding starts to twist into a scaly/spiny mass. He's got to be in there somewhere.

It's moving more quickly than she thought it would. She'd expected it to start one part at a time. An arm, then his face, then…  
What a way to pick her battles.  
She wonder's if she's fooling herself that his/its eyes aren't completely red this time.  
It raises itself of off the couch and blunders to the center of the room. The lamp crashes to the ground, somewhere next to the ruined couch.  
She maintains a step ahead of it, nearly stepping on glass. She will jump forward and impale herself on one of those spikes before she lets it bust out of the doorway.  
She's the focus. Darned if she's going to be quiet about it.

"Clumsiness isn't so bad really. You just learn to manage it." She waves her arms about cautiously. Jolting movements, noise… They won't help.  
It's still moving forward and she wonders what else it can break. The movements are inhuman, sure but she sees an effort at greater lethargy there.

She finds herself walking backwards, keeping it in sight. She doesn't have room for much finesse.  
There's a bit of glass digging in at her ankle and it hurts like the Sith.

She's not looking, but she thinks that there must be an off button for the set. She pushes the largest one.  
Blessed silence.

The silence may be good for him-in-it, but she can't stand it.  
"The meteor rocks fell when you were three years old. The scope of the area was right about where you were. And I found your father of sorts. He didn't look like I would have wanted to invite him to supper."

It's still watching her. They remain locked in this dance until it stops moving forward and she runs out of things to say.  
She measures time with every one of its rattling breaths.

* * *

Its three hours before the rippling effects starts to retreat. Davis isn't even aware for the first fifteen minutes, just lying there.  
She takes the opportunity to sit and to extract the shard from her foot. Said shard has broken into several bits and she needs a pair of tweezers. No use in healing over it if the glass is still there. She wishes her power could also allow her to teleport things. No such luck.

She tries to use her fingers, and predictably cuts them too.

"Shit!"  
This is, of course, the exact moment he chooses to open his eyes.

"There's blood on your ankle." He almost brushes the side with his fingers but moves his hand away at the last moment.

"That was awfully brittle glass on your lamp. Do you have half as many tweezers as you have needles around here? Get me one please, and I will enlighten you."

He gets one with surprising speed and manages to avoid the glass.

"Your problem is amplified by noise and violence, even on television sets. And people. Movies are going off of the list unless you watch Anne of Green Gables or something about fluffy bunnies.  
I hate to say it, but it might have been easier for you if you had been something other than an EMT. A reclusive writer would have been ideal. I _know_ you have this heroic-restitution thing going. So meditation is next."

* * *

This time she wears her green pinstripe pajamas, the least sexy thing she can possibly imagine. She's washed and dried Davis's shirt in the shower, away from Lois all-seeing eyes. It still smells like him. She could hang it over the shower door but she doesn't. She leaves it where it is, carefully tucked into the bottom of her bag.

She can't hide the limp as she exits the bathroom, though it will be completely gone in a few minutes. He knows this, too, but it doesn't stop the self recriminating look on his face.  
"You always get hurt." Davis says.  
_It's a part of me._  
"I can't tell you much, just next time buy plastic lamps.  
Besides, there's tomorrow night. Third times the charm, or so I've heard."

There are fewer pillows between them, but the distance is the same. She still holds his hand in a death grip.

She still hasn't mastered the art of goodnight conversation.  
"This time you changed and it looked a lot like a seizure. I remembered I read a book once called 'Terminal Man'. Harry Benson, the main character gets seizures that turn him violent. So these doctors start a memory training program as part of his treatment.  
We can try this somewhere between the Hindi and Zen meditation. I'll be your own Dr. Ross. What do you think?"

He thinks there is so much he doesn't want to remember.  
"We can try that." He says.

"The book, how does it end?"  
She thinks of the Doctor running though darkened corridors, a pistol in her hand, shooting. Crying senseless, inexplicable tears.  
She answers too quickly.  
"I don't remember. Maybe it doesn't matter.  
We create our own endings."  
He goes silent and she wishes it could make it easy again.  
"Hey Davis?"  
"Yeah, Chloe."  
"Sorry about your couch."  
That was almost a smile. She can take that.

* * *

**_Thanks all of you who have commented. I really appreciate you taking the time to let me know you are reading, and your comments._**

**_I love the feedback more than the holiday. If you have any quibbles, please voice them. I'm trying to get my characterizations/Smallville facts as accurate as I can. This is going to get more complex as more characters pop up._**

**_ Thanks in advance if you do comment/critique/debate me on something. I will most likely glomp (=anime style hug) you._**

**_Reviews are the catalysts that generally inspire me to write faster. (Even though I write quite a bit any way. ;) )_**

**_So thanks! :)  
_**


	7. find a way to reconcile the dark

_**Short Update. Here we go.**_

* * *

It's been her third day doing this. She goes out with Lois for a few hours, then to Lois's apartment to work. Lois leaves for clubs or shopping at seven, and at the last moment she begs off for a loose end in her article. Lois just smiles.

Today, she left earlier than usual and actually did some more research. She piled Davis's kitchen table all over with meditation manuals while waiting for him to come home.  
He didn't mind. It's not like he had any knives to cut food with on it anyway.

Now, he's out of uniform, putting yogurts for her to eat in the refrigerator while she puts the some kind of chant on his CD player next to him. He hasn't bumped into her once.

Barring the hand-holding, his skittishness hasn't gotten any better. He meticulously respects her personal space and pretends he's enthralled with whatever he's doing, but always watches her out of the corner of his eye as if he needs to reassure himself she's there. His methods of putting her at ease, she thinks, are really mixed up.

He doesn't really believe that he didn't hurt her, or that she's safe. He doesn't trust the Davis part that holds it back when it comes to her. They're going to be caught in this dance forever if he keeps hating himself.

There has been some progress. He'd smiled once this morning when she made a joke about his ambulance partner being Mel Torme.  
Later. She'll tell him later.

He doesn't really say much about this time. He follows her obediently when she walks out of the kitchen.

"So what have you got for me? Should I prepare for Hellboy the edited version or Anne of Green Gables? "

"Cute."  
He is making an effort, today.

"I've got a tiny glass Buddha for you to look at on the table. That's about it.  
Your meditation experience will be sadly lacking incense or candles because fire could be worse than a glass lamp. If that doesn't matter, want to do this?"

He looks surprised when the living room has been restructured all around them. It hadn't been too difficult to pull the Shinto mat into the space that once contained the couch, but she'd also hidden anything breakable.

They sit cross-legged, opposite each other. She mostly tells him what to expect for an hour and he watches her.  
She's toned the lights down only so far that he can still see her face.

This first time she tries to find the balance between sounding too much like a reporter and sounding sleepy.

"We're going to breathe in for seven, breathe out. That's good. Breathe with me."

_Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One._  
Either she's doing a very good job, or he's falling asleep.

"Pick a focus. It's supposed to be something like a box, or a Rose, or a hat. Since your focus is me, I guess you have to see me in three dimensions in your mind."

This part was in the book, she swears. This is not a Freudian slip.

"Imagine that you are within me and I am in you. You are a part of me. We are the same."

She's tempted to open her eyes. She doesn't know if it's to clear them of unwanted? images or see how he reacts.  
She doesn't need her breathing to pick up. She's messing them up, damn it.

He's tense. It's almost Eight o'clock.

She thinks of him lying on the floor, jerking with the change.  
_One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven..._  
"Grab of hold of my wrists." She_ can_ improvise.

"Now, let *it* go."

* * *

_**Yes, I know. Ambiguous spot to end the chapter. What do you think?  
**_

_**Thanks all! Happy new year!**_


	8. like we are falling awake

**_For those of you who really didn't like the pseudo cliffhanger._**

* * *

Ten hours later she's still whole. Ten fingers, ten toes, not even a bleeding ankle to speak of.

Chloe's rather miffed she didn't think of it sooner.

It wasn't really the idea of holding it at bay. The meteor's modification of his physiology (whatever that was) _required _him to shift. Perhaps, pushing back the infection only made the change worse.

The only task she really had was to keep it from doing anything to anyone.

Things have been easier since then. She makes sure to lock the doors and keep anyone else away. The idea that it could break her in two for a while stopped giving her panic attacks a long time ago.  
She knows to sit in front of the doorway and it doesn't try to move past her. It breathes like her even when it rattles.  
It often tries to touch her.

Davis has little or no memories of this, but things look up.  
They've almost become domestic.  


* * *

  
Of course, there are always sacrifices to be made.  
Not letting anyone come to the apartment is one. She creates an elaborate trail just in case Lois gets curious to where she goes. In spite of the teasing, it's been harder to talk to her cousin these past few days.  
She can never order pizza at night, never talk to any neighbors, and tries to avoid anyone near this part of town entirely.  
She doesn't ever want to see anyone cut to ribbons again.  
Sometimes she wonders what exactly makes it so dangerous to all life except her own. She'd kind of dead ended at that one. She still wants to know.

Worse, there's always the fear that an overly helpful passerby might send this whole arrangement crashing on its head.  
When he-changes-into-it, it does make some pretty horrific noises. She thinks it would be better if Davis had an apartment somewhere more secluded.  
They- he can't afford it yet.  
And the idea that she'd be more openly living with him while she keeps her would be wedding dress in the closet of Lois's apartment opens a whole can of worms she's not ready to deal with.  
There's the uncertainty, the nerves, the feeling like she's ready to fall. It reminds her that this thing, whatever it is, is real.

* * *

When the truth comes, it doesn't come because of desperation or fear. She's as close to content as she remembers in any of her vaguely pleasant memories, watching him try to cook her the perfect egg.

He's seen fit to tell her she's amazing for the hundredth time. He doesn't need to tell her why for her to believe that he believes it. The best part is he's not self recriminating about it this time.  
They're okay.

"I feel like myself right now." She says. "It feels good."  
"Just now?" Davis asks.

"I hope it keeps on, but yes. You knew."

"I could tell there was something up with you. I thought…"  
(That she'd been in mortal terror of being shish-kabobbed.)  
He stops watching the crisping edges of the omelet to look straight at her.

"It's not that though. You look less tired." He says.  
"You don't have to tell me what, but if you need to, I'm here for as long as you need me."

She could just say thanks and dig into her egg. The avoidance of it would be so typical, so safe.  
But she knows that now is one of the few moments she can know why she's doing this. He'll understand. She wants to tell him.

"Have you ever thought that you didn't know why you've done all the things in your life?" _He's taken CPR since high school. Maybe not. _

"That was me, this half-week. Very little makes sense and I know it should."

"This doesn't sound like a simple existentialist crisis, Chloe."

"It's literal. I haven't gotten better really. My brain just has holes in different places. I don't think I was ever cured."

"That was what you were afraid to tell me."

"No one else knows."

His eyebrows scrunch up and he looks away from his masterwork.

"God, Chloe. You've been dealing with that and trying to help me?"  
She really didn't want him to jump back into his sea of guilt.

"My mind was in shambles. When we worked on this together you helped me discover that it wasn't all holes. I had a purpose. I know what I'm about now." She says.

_It's talking to her friend over coffee and grabbing destiny and meteor rocks and telling them both to shove it._

"You're not going to deal with this alone. I'll be here for you. I can track down some friends who can do something there…we can find a way…"

Something in his voice stirs a familiar feeling of hope. Everything would be fine, fixed suddenly.

"You already are helping. This might sound horribly Lifetime, but I feel like I need this as much as you do."

"And I think you're even more amazing."

She hands him the empty plate, and he doesn't jump when their fingers brush.  
"Keep that up and it will be the perfect egg."

"Won't it, though?  
And Chloe? What's _Lifetime_?"

* * *

_**Author's Rambles: ****No, the angst has not died. It's going to be making a comeback, in a big way, soon.**_

_**Think Davis sounds too much like Brennan on Bones? Drop impressions and critiques by me, if you do have the time. Maybe just type 'I read it' or 'Write Faster' in the little box, and it'll make my day. :)**_

_**Till next time!  
**_


	9. I thought I lost you somewhere

Here is the next chapter. Short, plot centered and no Davis, but something you'll recognize.

* * *

Her fist trembles over the polished knocker.

She's still in Metropolis, on a hometown street that is bright and cheery and not wealthier than is comfortable.  
She tracked herself here easily. Her Isis planner was cleared off for one hour, here, each day.

She has memories of this place. Memories of coming in and out, pacing out quickly, keeping her head down. This is where she came for reassurance, utterly reasonable speeches and speculations about curing her mental state those last two months.  
She can vaguely remember sitting on a gaudy leather couch and closing her eyes. She doesn't remember what she said.  
The answers could be here.

The office is under furnished and brightly lit and there is a solid looking man with a teenager's face sitting at a low desk spewed all over with papers.  
She doesn't remember this one.

"I'm here to see Dr. Lister."  
She knows this. She'd written it twice.

"I'm his assistant." the young man says. Even as he answers, he looks flustered.

"Have a seat. If you can stand the mess, I might be able to help you."  
She takes her time sitting down so he has time to compose himself.

He shuffles the papers forward. The words that catch her eye look a lot like 'trauma', 'incinerated' and 'life-giving breath'.

Suddenly, he realizes he has practically put client files under her nose and pushes them to the other side.  
"Complaint?"  
"Things I don't remember. I was taking memory therapy." (She can't say, I think I was taking it…)

"It could have been residual trauma. Something so bad your mind blocked it out, do you think?"  
_Nothing too much worse than being controlled like a demented muppet when I was a girl. When I grew up, I was poked and prodded by pointy instruments and covered with dead bodies. I died about ten times, and I don't remember many specifics. Have we covered all the bases?_

"I've never actually taken one, but I read a case once where this woman was convinced she was possessed by the spirit of her dead husband. She said he made her kill her dog with her car and then made her forget. Pretty twisted, huh?"

He straightens his glasses and *winks* at her.  
She doesn't wink back.

"Oh, right. How do you feel about your parents?"

"I think I'll wait, thanks."

* * *

Dr. Lister practically flutters into the room. He, at least, is composed of all the details she remembers. He still keeps his red, partially bald head uncovered, and moves his short legs quickly as he walks. He nods at her, pumps her hand exactly twice and walks straight into the back room.

"Sorry about my nephew. He's a playwright, said he'd stay here a day for inspiration. He didn't tell you he was my assistant, did he? I should fire him…. Are you still planning for the wedding?"  
"I finished that."

He nods too cheerfully, shakes his head and pulls her into the room behind the messy washroom.

"Now we can talk.  
Where have you been? I was thinking you had abandoned us. It was a whole month."

"I had a relapse. I came back for help."  
"I was afraid this would happen."

"What do you remember?"

"I was suffering from an acquired mental problem, my friend at Isis saw I needed help and I came to you, a psychiatrist. You do have a degree, don't you?"

"You didn't meet me through Isis.  
Miss Sullivan, _Watchtower_… I didn't help you with the memory loss. I was your contact."

* * *

"Hello, Perry? This is Chloe Sullivan. Are you still up for that favor?"

* * *


	10. it's not the way that I wanted to feel

Note to:**_ babyshan_**, hope you find this chapter less confusing. *Some* stuff is revealed. Thanks so much for stopping by. :D

_**Note:**_ Just to push the plot forward. Chloe, Clark and their newly shambolic relationship.

* * *

It's the first bad sign when Lois is home and there's no_ noise _on the speakers.

"Clark's here. I could only keep him out for so long. Sorry, cuz."

He's sitting on the couch, dressed in some suit that doesn't look comfortable. She feels a strange pang, even though he doesn't greet her, or have a hint of that perpetually benevolent look on his face.

"Why'd you do it?"  
He's angry, too angry for all this. To think she worried that she could have been guilted into telling him why she left if he'd been smiling.

"Do what?"  
"I know you called Perry."

"…Not like it's your business, Smallville." Lois cuts in.

"What made you do it? Chloe…we agreed, it would be best to let the records die natural deaths.  
Did anyone tell you about the latest recruit? He would have been all over this! He still will be if he asks around."

Chloe didn't think so. The blood covered emergency parking lot without a single victim hadn't even made the 'freaks' special.

"I copied the records and put them right back. I wouldn't have done it unless it was vitally important."

"Nothing can be that important that you'd risk other people...You always told me that."  
"I'm sure that sounds good on paper, but I didn't tell you that."

"This is the sound of me leaving." Lois says.

* * *

It's just Chloe and Clark, now. She doesn't think they've ever argued like this.

"I know you can trust Perry. But asking him to dig up all the records on Luthorcorp and meteor-infected experiments from the past year for even 5 minutes was dangerous.  
Word gets around at the newspaper when that much information is accessed. You remember what that's like-you worked there… Information like that could be dangerous to…lots of people..."

"Say what you mean, why don't you? Dangerous to meteor freaks like I was?"

"Dangerous…the idea is just dangerous in general...Where is this coming from?"

She doesn't answer. She knows that as hardheaded as Clark can be, he'll connect the dots if she mentions the word again. (Once, he was the one person she had told freely; who hadn't judged her for it, even though he didn't understand.)

"So you stopped by to lecture me about something that might fall under the definition of generally dangerous? Thanks Clark. I'd like to get to my lunch now, if you don't mind."  
He follows her into the kitchen.

"You shouldn't work on the week before your wedding. It's not healthy. You're always on your own, mostly working on articles which you don't talk about."

"With Lois."  
"It's almost the same, only louder. The stress can't be good for you. I'm worried about you, Chloe."

"Nothing is wrong. I was fine until just a moment ago, when my best friend started rambling on about general danger. I want this to be a good week."

"It can be. You know I'm always here for you and you should tell me…That's what friends are for."

Chloe crumples her face into what she hopes is a smile before taking a bite of her fish sandwich.  
"Nothing is wrong at all. It's my bachelorette week and I'm working on a story, the scoop of which I can't reveal. I'm happy as I can be."  
"How can you be happy when you run away from the people that care about you?"

"I am not running away.  
"You didn't call Jimmy…You didn't e-mail me… You didn't even take pictures."  
She finds his desire to have everything in a neat little category aggravating, suddenly. It's not like he knows much about the world himself.

"Those shouldn't be 'If…Then' statements.  
As hard as it might be to believe, Clark, I'm happy in spite of wedding jitters. I don't want a case of you aggravating them.  
Either grab that other sandwich on the counter and tell me why you're wearing that monkey suit or pipe down."

"I wouldn't mind eating something." It is farm boy Kent again, thank God.

"Just keep in mind that you can tell me whatever's going on, alright?"

She looks into his clear blue eyes, and thinks that she really can't. He wants to believe in the best friend that calls her fiancée, e-mails him, and completely lazes around on her free days. He can't handle the girl who doesn't know why they've been friends so long.

"I'll drop you a line if Lois tricks me into ending up in a really weird bar, okay?"

"You got it."

He smiles strangely, again, and she thinks that something tying them together has unraveled a little more.  
She doesn't know why. It doesn't mean it stops hurting.

_

* * *

_

He leaves after about ten minutes

She goes to her room and doesn't really see the time line she's taped to the wall. She remembers when Clark bravely offered to be her own personal bomb squad despite the fact that he couldn't have told her heads or tails about ammunition.

This time around, she will learn to live without a safety net.  
She hopes she'll know how.

_

* * *

_

___**Endnote:**_ Davis will be in the chapter after the next. I apologize in advance for any Davis withdrawal. 

_To inspire me, please write anything in the review box. even 'moar!', or 'no davis yet?' When I know someones reading I feel like I am not embarking on a search for Godot._

_Nevermind. Silly reference. :P  
_

* * *


	11. you don't expect an easy answer

_**Notes: **__You may feel free to poke me because there is no Davis in these next *two* chapters. But he will be in the next two updates as he and Chloe deal. Did I get your attention yet? :p  
Follow the cut for Chloe, a wedding dress and dumping some old baggage.__  
_

* * *

She smoothes the strap sleeves of her wedding dress. She tries to recall how many times she's thought of standing at the altar- happy, convinced, her future somewhere beyond a carpet of scattered petals.

She thinks it didn't matter who the groom's face was (Clark's or Jimmy's), just that he would be there and she would love him.

It's been six days leading up to this. Subconsciously, she supposes, she didn't want to let it go.  
But she didn't exactly want to keep it either.

_  
_

* * *

It would be wrong to show up on her wedding day. So she shows up a day before the wedding, dressed like she's going to the Planet.  
He's having lunch with a few buddies that quickly go off, raising eyebrows.

"Chloe! ach." Jimmy makes a big show out of not looking at her. He's enjoying this-having a fiancée, his almost bride come and visit him.  
She feels bad, and knows what she's going to say.

"I'm not wearing a wedding dress. Geesh."

"Right."  
"I love it that you're here. So, what's up?"

"Not too much. Just a …tough…question."

"I'm all about tough questions. Zen master, remember?"

"…Do you really love me, Jimmy?"

"Of course! I've always loved you."

"Why?"  
It's an honest question. She doesn't want romanticism.

"You're the first girl I wanted to take out to a movie just to stare at …you were my first sweetheart and only real girlfriend... You're the only girl I've ever proposed to or wanted to marry.  
I think you like me. Right?"  
The side of his mouth tilts into a confused smile.

"Is this a case of bride fear? I'm not going to run off. I'm sorry about…what happened before. I was much more immature and I had a crush… temporary side…thing..."  
Oh yes, there was this girl called Kara, once. Clark's 'cousin'. Beautiful in that same overwhelming way.  
She had vanished to him in front of the other blond. (Why did that always happen?) And maybe he never said so, but before she left, she thought Kara was to him what Clark was to her.  
Maybe they were both the same, holding onto each other because they were so very afraid of getting hurt.

It would be so easy if Jimmy did not want to love her so much.

"You can count on me, now. I'm not in love with anyone else. I'll stand with you through bride jitters and freaky green rocks and…"

"It's not any of that, Jimmy. My problem is a little different."

She doesn't need the questions to interrupt with her search now. She could tell him about the powers, but she doesn't need him to tell Clark. They've gotten close.

"I'm not-- the girl you asked to marry you, anymore."  
"Of course you are. You're Chloe. You love coffee, you…Wait. This isn't one of these weird existentialist crises, right? Because…"  
His nostrils flare the way they do when he's confused or scared.

"Nothing like that. When I was with… Lois, out there in Metropolis, I rediscovered the weird out there. I found out some things about me.  
Like the fact that I want to do crazy research problems, and follow my stories across the globe. I ruined Lois's week by not partying too hard because I was at work. If we got married, you'd barely see me.  
It would be unfair to you to settle down now."

"We could make it work."

"We'd know each other through e-mails, and drives across the country. Can you imagine yourself being married without a wife? Would you really wait so long to see me once a month, once a week?"  
He doesn't look at her for a second.

"You wanted a home and 2.5 kids and the white picket fence..."

"None of it would matter if we loved each other. I could bag lunches and you could come visit at the Planet some days. We could go out to dinner together. We could make it work."

She doesn't think she could imagine it, even barring present circumstances. She doesn't want to be wined and dined into romance. She wants to be whole.

"That would be like dating. Which is another reason why we don't need to think about running into the chapel tomorrow. While I'm gone, you could meet a nice girl, one that's not all crazy for the weird and scary.  
I'm setting you free."

"Just like that? The wedding's tomorrow and you're going to walk away…"

"I'm not the same, anymore, Jimmy."

She presses the plastic ring into his hand and kisses him on the cheek. She feels lighter and heavier at the same time.

"I'll miss you. I don't want you to do this." He says.  
She knows he's already thinking of just how he's going to tell his mother, and how they'll handle the minister.

"But I need to. You'll see. You're going to flirt, and go out on your own and rediscover a whole new way of living."

"Wait a minute, Chloe. This…whole thing…"  
He looks embarrassed for just a minute, instead of resigned.

"It's about you. It isn't about Clark right?"

"I promise you, it is not about Clark."  
And for the first time, it's completely true.

_  
_

* * *

_Questions? Comments? Quibbles? Find something confusing?(Something pretty big is coming up.)  
_

_Type even one word in the little box and I will love it.  
_

_Thanks if you do comment. It makes my day, and makes me type faster. :p _


	12. a world that could not exist

* * *

Things almost make sense. She's not engaged, or in a position to not live up to who she used to be. She's not scared of what she might do.  
She knows that taking scissors to everything she's relied on until now shouldn't make her feel so much better. It's only for now there's no pressure. She doesn't worry that she doesn't look quite happy or that she'll suddenly self-destruct.

This feeling of freedom will vanish soon, under a deluge of concerned phone calls and e-mail messages that she can't help. But not before these hours have past.  
Clark will realize he's been missing someone who just doesn't exist anymore.

* * *

She wonders what kind of person she must have been to have lived that way. She must have been something. Holding onto life- dating, loving her best friend, watching movies, spying and hacking into high-clearance facilities.

On all of her non-top secret projects, she's been easier to track than Davis. She remembers the passwords she used, the articles that had been her life. So much about the meteor infected, weird anomalies from various locations, facts that didn't add up.  
They weren't really long pursuits. That two week stint in California (just before the first sickness) that was so much more than it seemed; two short commercial projects in Star City, her internship… She followed this- bull headedly, single-mindedly- and she never made peace with it.  
She hasn't seen what remains of her mother for more than a year. Most of her life has been based around her all along and the fact is so cold now. Of course she still cares for her mother.  
But logic won't work here. It's the same senseless fear. She can't see her.  
(And she knows that until she really knows something, she won't.)

* * *

It should all have come together in California.  
She has the note, hastily scribbled in the half-light. A scrambled telephone line, a hidden relocation address...  
Research facility 97A (just out in the country near Metropolis, hidden cheerfully behind sleepy trees and overgrown grasses), Contact Name: Robert Bowning, (You expected a poet, Miss Sullivan?). She remembers that he had a fragile voice.  
_"Do exactly as I tell, you W-Miss Sullivan."_

Those morning conversations with Lois that start and stop, her lies to Clark, that chain of scattered notes and arrows that have come to mean so much.  
They all come down to this.

* * *

"I would accuse you of being a shifter, but you would have had to fool our DNA print scanner, retina scanner and my excellent hearing."

"Watchtower." she says.

"Yes, I know you. I hear unfortunate circumstances have befallen us."

It's an old scientist that limps leisurely to where she stands and motions her to a chair. He shouldn't be commanding, bony and stooped as he is, but he manages very well. He is too pale, as if he has spend all of his life cloistered in a laboratory; but his eyes are clear.

"You will play a game of chess, won't you? It's an odd habit of mine, but I always require it of agents before entering the lab."  
Chloe thinks this is another test. She holds out for six minutes before losing her king.

"Do you play often?" she asks.

"Rarely. I abhor it really."

"This may sound ridiculous, but just how smart are you?"

"My IQ is approximately 187, but I never took a truly accurate track of it. Numbers are unreliable."

"And here I was, feeling an idiot for losing. Figures."

"No it doesn't."  
"What do you mean?"

"You should have shut me down in less than two moves. When you came to me you complained of a sort of reverse infection by experimentation. You had acquired super-accelerated intelligence. Unfortunately, such a quick processal of data caused your more basic memories to be erased. This should have been an easy game for you.  
So you lost your memories and your meteor intelligence. Pity."

"You are telling me I was a human supercomputer for a time? Is that even a possibility with meteor rocks?"

"There are very few things that are truly impossible. Unlikely, yes. Nature or fate does not often intervene in such useful ways.  
There was no doubt in your case."

"It is hard to explain how you really don't remember. You should have been regaining memories now.  
There could have been some interference, but I doubt...  
We can get to the bottom of this. I could dedicate the staff to your case, temporarily. What do you say?"

Chloe doesn't say that she doesn't know why. This man doesn't have much patience for that sort of thing.  
"So many resources just for me? What about the projects you're working on now?"

"The undertakings would be more effective with the entire team in tact."  
"So I pulled my weight?"

"You hacked into the Sergis plant in an eighth of the time I did, last time you were here. You didn't have equipment, or twenty staff members to back you up.  
More simply put, you were our program."

Chloe settles for saying nothing. It makes sense from a logical viewpoint.  
"I only choose the best, Watchtower.  
I may admit the hope that one day we will be able to play chess again."

* * *

"I'll have to re-introduce you to all of our agents."

"Vincent!"

The first face who isn't hostile doesn't look quite human, with skin unnaturally gray. It's a man's face and it's pleasant enough, with eyes that look capable of crinkling in the corners. This Vincent is a large man, with beefy hands that she thinks could crush anything.  
She hopes he won't break her bones as she extends a hand to shake.  
He is the one to hesitate.

"Welcome back, captain." He tells her as everything starts to blur.

* * *

_'Watchtower!'  
She sees a duplicate of herself with her face covered by a mask, dressed in black, walking through some tunnels ahead.  
It is her own voice, curiously toneless.  
'The alarms are shut off. Release them. They are terrified enough now, and if they don't get out of the chambers they will be destroyed by the system. I have a task to take care of.'_

It's almost completely silent but her own mind is thinking that she won't leave the captain/herself behind. Somebody else, Viper?, has done it.  
She says nothing to (herself/the captain).  
They've walked to the very last of the testing rooms

"Now what are we going to do about you?" she hears herself say. "You did want to test the last device."  
There's a buzzing sound for an undetermined amount of time, inhuman growling noises.  
"You should have known you could not play God."

They should be out by the fifteenth minute. They have already called in the police, and being there never ends well.

'Captain!' Her speaking voice belongs to a man. She walks in and sees the-person-as-herself studying a body in a lab coat, with skin curiously red and foul.

'I told you to leave, Vincent.'  
The woman with her face stays back a moment longer, looking blankly at the dead eyes.  
'He actually thought he could engineer these gifts, play the role of chance. He had a few ideas and he buried them in fancy. A waste of such potential.  
I suppose it doesn't matter.'  


* * *

Then nothing.  
She's not forcefully ejected from the vision. It ends and she sees a white ceiling and too many gray machines surrounding her like traps.

Little snippets of other visions/memories are colliding with each other. Jumbled sentences.  
_She thinks that she needs to tell the daughter about this, the brightness. A flurry of impressions, thick eyeglasses and large simple eyes, thick curly hair… childlike fingers…_

_The air needs to be humidified._

The captain could kill her. If there is no purpose to it, it's safe.

Her thoughts are chiming. She can barely speak.  
"What did you do to me?"

"Vincent didn't do anything to you. He's just manipulates hydrokinetic energy. You touched him and you both collapsed. He should be fine, if missing some data."

_Any residual trauma? Your memory would block it out…_  
It's not her trauma. She's the cause of it all.  
She can see more of the cracks in herself. The gaps are blinding her, now- the little moments that sputter into nothingness…moments full of things like this.  
_Why did she want her memories?_

"Watchtower. Perhaps you should let us monitor your brain waves. The data could help us discover why your… infection is morphing."

"No. No. Not now. I need something else…"

The air is too dry. She needs to breathe.

When she finds the back way and exits, the pass code she uses is not her own.

* * *

_If you are confused, I see where you are coming from. Let's just say that _

_Chloe's healing mutation may be changing. It will be explained. I promise._

_**Endnotes:**_ So what do you think of the plottiness? What do you think it could mean for Chloe and Davis? Quibbles?  
Or just comment and say, 'what did you do? nutcase! Give me back the fluff!' :p


	13. when that day comes look into my eyes

_**Notes: **_Yes, Davis is in this Short! chapter, as promised. And I see a clear trend in the polling on my profile, now. I'll get to it. Soon. Promise! ;)

* * *

She goes straight to Davis's apartment, fumbles for the key under the mat.  
Sinks into the corner in the wall, trying to make sense of the jumble in her head. She can see her impassive face, smell the burnt flesh…

_Vincent thinks it/*she* enjoyed it._  
It's not the Id, it's not her mother, and it's not her freaky brain imagining things that are not there…  
That was why. She was that. There was no room for anything else.  
Her tears are not going to heal her, but they come out anyway

* * *

"Chloe, I thought that was you." That's Davis's voice coming to her, not Vince's.  
_That was you. That was you. That is you._  
That's not Davis's voice she hears so clearly.

Davis is here already, probably reading the meditation guide she brought and she's in the defensive corner.

"Chloe what's wrong? Chloe!" Not Watchtower. That is Davis. She's not dreaming it.  
Her mind quiets temporarily.  
She doesn't think she can handle Vince's memories settling. She'll see her face, burnt hands, her hands bloody…her hands…

It's the paramedic voice. "Breathe. You don't need to talk." He must be here in this same corner. She expects an oxygen mask.

"Remember me?"

"Davis."

"You remember you are Chloe."  
Is she? Chloe was the best friend, the girl who wrote stories. She wants to be that…

"My name is Chloe."  
Watchtower, the woman with the dead eyes.

"You're not fine. What happened?"

"I killed him." He knows not to ask just yet. She doubts she can explain.

It's an awfully familiar feeling, the hard weave of the uniform against her cheek.

Whatever just happened had apparently negated what was left of the no touching rule. She needs this to keep from cracking.

She can hold on to the way his hands unconsciously massage her shoulders, the way he tells her 'I know who you are.' She can focus on his breath, in and out.

_One, Two, Three, Four…._

She falls asleep on the floor, head nearly on his shoulder.  
He doesn't change, that night.

* * *

_**Questions? Comments? Quibbles? (**_Kindly drop them in the little box and I will jump to an update. :p)  
Next chapter gets into the actual 'dealing'. And you get much more interaction.

* * *


	14. the room is spinning, I've got no choice

_**Notes: **An update, finally. With Chloe, angst, dealing, and something that may be painful for Davis._

* * *

_9: 00 A.M._  
All the blankets from the bed are tucked around her spot on the floor like some great nest.  
Davis must have left by now.  
He probably didn't sleep a wink and threw himself right back into his shift. Today will be hell for him, holding it at bay. She should go do something-anything until he gets back.

* * *

She's been afraid to wake up, and now she's afraid to move. There weren't any dreams except the girl's face (such a small girl) and floating red balloons. Nothing of her own (she never dreams, even now, about that) but the silence is swallowing her up.  
Maybe she should go, beg Lois to take her to one of the craziest clubs she knows, somewhere where she'll try to drink four whiskeys straight up and only touch the first glass. She realizes of course that it's not an option for her now, even if having an even more jumbled mind will hide what she doesn't want to see.

She fancies the dishes are rattling in the washer. Some company (even that possessed thing) is better than none at all.  
It starts squeaking again and she hears some polite cursing.

"Davis?"  
The blankets drop around her feet as she pads those few feet.  
God. She's still in her wrinkled pantsuit. It smells too synthetic.

* * *

She can hardly see the back of his head, as obscured as it is by the lump of tools on the counter.  
He's in jeans with an actually fray in them, holding a monkey wrench that's not doing any good. She thinks that the only thing missing from the picture to make it homey would be a spot of dirt on his cheek.  
"…Stupid thing…"

"Thanks."

"Not you… I meant…"

"Of course you did. I meant for--  
I'd be swearing a blue streak. Is this the second time it's overflowed?"

"Fourth."

"We should do something about that."  
He stops messing around. She wonders when 'we' has stopped being her dirty word. Whatever she is is only going to tear them apart.

"There's always the coffee maker. Last cup is yours."  
"We ran out of coffee?"  
"Two pots a day? It happens."

She pours it out herself. "I take it that it's not a snow day."

"I took the day off. I was due for a vacation anyway."  
She knows its killing him waiting for her to talk. And the words are there, right at the tip of her tongue but she doesn't want them to come out. Once they do they'll be solid and she'll start seeing it all again.

"Thanks for the sustenance."  
"No problem."  
The feeling of the cup in her fingers is warm and comforting. She takes her first sip and nearly spits it out. Cleaner. Colder. It makes her eyes water and her nose sting; and her head isn't clear at all.  
"Water."  
It's in her hand before she opens her eyes again.  
She hears the legs of the chair scraping right in front of hers.

"Drink that first. I'll be sitting here until you want to talk."

* * *

In less than ten minutes it's all out of her in stops and starts and jumbles.  
"I'm dangerous." She says.

"We're in the same boat then."

"I killed a man!"

"And I-it did before you died to save him."

"Not the same way." She sits, hunched into herself on the tiny chair. Her face twists into a pinched, unreadable expression, trying not to get teary again. She's scared of herself, he knows. But she still trusts logic.

"Look, Chloe, all the variables are there. Meteor power?"  
"Check."  
"Dead people?"  
"I wish I could forget."  
"Not remembering a thing?"  
"Most times."  
"So what makes you so different from me?"

"It takes you over. I was aware. I could see it. I –it was thinking about it."  
"You don't know that."

"I saw it. Don't you see? I'm much worst even if...  
First is the fact that I touched the guy and knocked him out. My power is changing into something more aggressive. I have what he was thinking up here."

She draws a hand over her head vaguely. It prickles.

"I want nothing more than to jump into the ocean right now.  
Literally, he's going to wake up with holes in his brain."

"I'm pretty sure that would kill him."

"Right, Mr. Lofty EMT… You know what I mean.  
--And Lois—God, Lois. We're cousins. It's not anything odd when she gives me a hug. How am I going to explain being skittish as a rabbit?  
It's who I—was anyway. I had no problem touching people. She'll find out something's majorly wrong and she'll start investigating…Maybe I can say I got a skin allergy… Do you know any contagious ones?"

"Not off the top of my head."

"I'm freaking out, aren't I?"

"Only a little. You want my honest opinion?"

"Shoot."

"Don't say anything until you know.  
What if you don't really have this thing? You've got to admit there are some pretty weird things out there. If the guy was telepathic or something he could have imagined the memories and put them into your head."

"You mean like professor X."

"Who?  
I just think maybe you can't trust these people."

"They know everything about me. Some things I didn't even know. I was like a supercomputer."

"I knew."

"And I didn't remember the fact that I was. I'm going crazy."

"Maybe it's not you at all. Roll with me on this one. Someone could have done something…"

"I saw me through his eyes. It was me and it didn't care about anything. I-it grabbed this scientist, stuck him in a machine and fried him."  
She twists her ring-less fingers around each other and he can see red marks forming. He fights the urge to reach out (just a few inches) to keep them still.  
He waits for her to continue.

"The guy thought I wouldn't have had a problem killing his seven year old daughter if she proved an inconvenience. His mind was so mixed up and paranoid and loyal and untidy that it looked real to me.  
I'm not ever going to get that out of my head."

"I know you better than him." His eyes soften slightly, and he's looking into her, trying to convince her in some way that doesn't involve if and what.

"You wouldn't have done that. When I met you with Bette, you risked your life so she wasn't on the street. That wasn't you."

"What if it was? What if I have a split personality? What if I can't control myself?"  
(What if I'm my mother?)

"Then I do what I can to help you."

"It can't be that simple."

"Excuse me if I disagree. Who taught the psycho monster to meditate?"

"It's not actual mediation…and it's not quite a psycho..."

"See…You admitted it. No self deprecation."

"The Ego thanks you." She thinks she must be smiling.  
He's too, almost. But he's got that look and is waiting for her to ask him something.  
She might as well ask him what's on his mind. She can't follow the train of his thoughts now.

"Well, go on then."

"So, we should find out if he was tricking you."  
There's one way to tell if he was.  
"So touch me."

She straightens up so quickly that her knee brushes his. Her face is suddenly so straight and impassive that he knows she's going to fight him.

"No, Davis."

"Yes."

"It's not..."  
"It makes sense."  
"Just like that? I could give you a partial lobotomy. I think I put him in a coma. He was hooked to an IV and machines... and…"

"Hey. I said I'd do anything to help you. There are no conditions on that. I want to do this."

"I'll hurt you."

"_It _hurt you."

"Indirectly. My choice."

"This is mine. It can only work once. After this it won't happen to me again. You can-- touch me all you want.  
For reassurance or anything."

"Of course."  
It's a bit like the last dream she ever had as herself. She thinks he was in it somewhere, extending a hand, just like this.  
And he trusts her, with all those memories. He knows.

"Don't tell me you're not the least bit curious."

She thinks that that Davis's thoughts in her head would be like him, completely out there; a warm buffer against all that's going on. She wonders when she'll start losing her memories of this. She wants to cry.  
Stupid hormones.

"It's going to hurt."  
"You know I once heard someone say life is pain. Beauty is pain only death isn't really pain… just like a…"  
"You should have told her you believed her right off the bat, you know."

* * *

If it was a truly objective experiment they could shake hands. Instead she lets her hand hover over his cheek for a second.  
"I-- I wouldn't have said this to anyone else." She really means something somewhere between 'I need you' and 'I'm afraid.'

He doesn't ask her, "Not even Clark?" He can read her too well - for a moment the hope in his look hurts her. She shouldn't feel this. But it's in the air between them and there are no gaps right now.  
"And if you wouldn't have been here, I would have found you."

Fingers touch skin and she sees Clark.

* * *

_**Endnotes: **_

_**Questions? Comments? Quibbles? Crit?** They all are my equivalent of---red?k, without the negative stuff. They make me fly! faster.__ (Kindly drop them in the little box!) Or just write, hurry up! how could you end there!!??_

_A/N: If you are confused, scroll down.**  
**_

_**v**_

_This does not mean Chloe is comparing him to Clark. This means Chloe's freaky power is sucking out one of his memories *of* Clark._

* * *


	15. I am sinking in this silence

_**Note: **Update! Chloe. Davis. What happens after Davis loses a memory?__**  
**_

* * *

"How do you feel?"

He blinks hard. "I'm fine. Nothing feels wrong."

"You?"  
"Better. It worked."

"What did you get?"

"Nothing too juicy. Just Clark following you back when those accidents happened. He did some illegal things, then."

It had been Clark. Doggedly breaking into a locker, throwing words around.

"Do you remember that?"

"No."  
She can still feel that heavy pressure, pulsing around him/her, hovering on the fringes of her thoughts, a strange blurring on the edges of her mind. That must be what happened to him when it began.  
She doesn't straighten her head as a pretext to rub away the phantom pain. He'd see it in a minute.

"Sorry."  
_How could he know?_  
"For what?" she asks.

"I wish you could have had a good memory."  
He's doing it again, uttering a line like that with such conviction that it _is_.

"I have a feeling you should store the ones you have."  
She knows so.

"Besides, it's not all that bad. I know Clark. Clark is… Clark. And right now, you and he are blocking out the other guy."

She scrubs a hand over her face. "But I still killed him."

"From what you said, he was willing to kill all those people in that plant."

"That's the thing. It doesn't matter how twisted he was. When I grew up, I always felt that I wouldn't ever…  
In the labs, no matter how far it got, I knew I couldn't take another life. It was not my choice to make. But it's like a switch was flipped off and I became vigilante Chloe."

"And now?"

"I'm not all me, but I don't feel any compulsions to fry people. I keep thinking that maybe that switch will flip again. And I can't let it."

He's suddenly at the forefront of everything, outlined in golds and sepias against the dull walls. She doesn't know why, but she needs to hear something. Anything.

He doesn't know if he can answer that short of uttering some cliché line, like 'We won't.'

He awkwardly reaches behind him for the dog-eared paperback. "What do you say we do Zen today? I can read it to you this time."

_

* * *

_

___**Endnote: **_  
This is horribly short. I just thought it would work better as a chapter this way.  


_Questions? Comments? Quibbles? Crit? It's all good._

_To inspire me, please write anything in the review box. even 'moar!', or 'I wanna know what happened to...?' _

_And for that person who asked for Tess a while back? Something's coming up...  
_

* * *


	16. somehow I'm still right here

_**Notes**: A longer chapter this time. Follow the cut for some Chloe and Davis, a man at a hospital and __Plot! Plot!_

_

* * *

  
_

Barring the painless hand holding over the Zen mat, it moved into a comfortable blur, mostly Davis reading to her, the Zen manuals-calm waters, Hindu manuals-a serpent coiled low in her belly...

(Which, she tried to forget, was connected to the Kama Sutra somewhere there.)  
Of course, he hadn't noticed that. He'd read cleanly and clearly without actually noticing how the collection of words sounded. He'd looked up at her every two minutes to check on her.

It took just under four hours for the world to feel nearly normal again.

By this time she thinks that if he actually tries to read the last book he's going to end up falling asleep on her shoulder. Not that she would mind it at all.

_Wonderful heroic idiot._ She thinks to herself. Of course he didn't sleep a wink.

"You don't have to stay up for me, right now. Your soothing reading of the principles of calmness worked."

He blinks quickly.  
"I'm not really tired."

"If you keep on denying it you may grow a long nose. This is your day off. You should sleep, or at least rest. It'll make things easier for you tomorrow. I don't want to have to forcefully hospitalize you for exhaustion."

"I don't know if that is a possibility, considering..."  
"I have my ways."  
"I'm sure you do." He smiles up at her, sleepy and content and she feels…connected.  
She gets the sudden urge to do something inane and affectionate, like a brush a hand over his forehead.  
Instead she gives him a hand up.

"I am going to scare us up some lunch. You are going to go to that bed and pretend to rest. Then I'll bring it, we'll eat and you'll sleep."

"You're spoiling me. I've heard of breakfast, but I've never heard of lunch in bed before."  
"You have now."

She does scare up a horrified tin of tuna, and chops up celery decently enough.  
They sit like Indians over the covers, and she is struck by how methodically he eats. Clark would have scarfed it down in a minute.

"So what are you going to do now?" he asks her.

"There's a man in a hospital bed I have to see."

* * *

It takes ten minutes for her to convince him that she'll be fine. Perhaps the only reason this worked is because he got his friend from the ambulance to drop her off at her friend the psychiatrists.

She knows she won't be able to count on Dr. Lister all the time, but today he goes the whole route. He even takes her to a gift shop on the way. There isn't exactly a present for 'Sorry I wiped your brain, bud.' She brings one of those five dollar get well bouquets anyway.

At the facility, it takes her fifteen minutes to run down where he could be, and five minutes to find someone will actually talk to her without looking like they want to bolt.

"How is he?" she finds herself asking the man who must be the janitor.

"Recovering. Second door to the left."  
Before she goes in, she rechecks the pair of winter gloves securely over her fingers.

* * *

She hears the rippling of water. Vincent is in a pallet in a wave tank, strapped with his head out of the water.  
He looks perfectly normal, perhaps a little grayer than usual.

"Hello." he says. She's grateful he didn't say Watchtower, this time.  
She can feel the sunflowers and carnations tickle her nose. She puts them next to the tank before she sneezes.

"No one has ever come to visit me before."  
_It was an accident. _

"I'm so sorry." She says.

"You know this line of work. We all have these things happen."  
He's taking it awfully calmly.

"The first time I manifested I wiped out a dam. Nothing heroic.

My second mission here and my powers malfunctioned again. They kind of knocked me out. I'm a fairly new addition here. Not very good.  
You're new here, too, aren't you? I've seen you on a few missions. Sorry I haven't learned your codename yet."

There's a sinking feeling in her gut as she tells him it's Watchtower. He honestly doesn't remember.  
But she holds her ground. She did this.

"As much as I like water, I get bored here on my own. Would you mind staying here for a bit and talking?"

He tells her about the last time he took his daughter to a circus.

* * *

She goes into the professor's lab without knocking.

"Watchtower, you have returned."

"In due time to know a hell of a whole lot of things don't add up. Vincent doesn't remember who I was. He doesn't remember why he is in that hospital bed…thing. You didn't tell him?"

"That mission is the only one he really completed with you in lead. Of course he doesn't remember. It is better for him.  
I protect my people."

"From themselves? From the truth?"  
The professor doesn't look at her, sifts through the pile of papers at his desk and she wants to hit him.

"I would have done nearly anything to stop what happened to me. How can you possibly think its better? Maybe he'll be angry at me, but I did this."

He doesn't look the least bit agitated that she is standing inches in front of him. He shuffles and shuffles and shuffles, and then answers, in true scientific fashion, with a question.

"Do you know what these are? Hundreds of connections, facilities to track. There are mutants in those facilities. People. We get them out because that's who they are, regardless of their possible danger to others. No one else will do this. Not the government, not hard hitting detectives…"

He pushes the files into her unresisting gloved hands.

"Look. See how many of those are half your own age. They will be destroyed there, twisted until they can never live normally."  
He limps away from her and she is forced to follow.

"That's what you're giving me? Really? That's the reasoning behind your code of ethics?"

"I don't want to do this, but they matter more. Do you honestly think that any of our agents would help with this after we learn how dangerous our own members can be? We can help more people this way."

"I didn't come to discuss abstract principles. Vincent deserves to know."

"If you persist, Watchtower, I won't stop you.  
I only ask that you get to know him now first. That memory changed the both of you. Know him as he is now, and then decide what to do."

* * *

_**Endnotes: **Questions? Comments? Quibbles? Crit? Speck! I love them. I love single words too. So if you have an opinion on the direction this is going, let me know. _

_(And if I've confused anyone, speak up and I will answer with *spoilers*.) ;)  
_

* * *


	17. forfeit all my lives, get just one right

* * *

Everything could fall into place soon. She could have her job back. She could go back to the secret life of hers she seems to have been drawn to. She could help people.

She would be walking those same halls, all over again. She would work not remembering what she did. It would be a new start, a clean slate, figuratively speaking. She would have taken a man's memories, changed him into something else. Just like she had changed into something else.  
She shouldn't want that.

Her fingers shake a little as she puts her key into the lock.

The house is quiet (too quiet), and she's glad that Davis is getting some sleep. Soon his automatic alarm will kick on and there will be sound again. She looks forward to the reprieve.

* * *

She wanders into the kitchen and puts on the coffee, more out of habit than anything else. The taste still falls strangely on her tongue.  
She wants nothing more than to grab an oversized sweater and curl up on her side of the bed.  
She wouldn't be able to sleep. She would listen to him breathe for the half hour until he woke up, and he would ask her and she'd tell him everything.  
And as comforting as the thought is, she needs to pull herself up.

She straightens up, clears the kitchen table and lays each file out on the clean surface.

She doesn't push her chair into the corner by the wall. Davis could walk in any minute and it would be perfectly fine.  
She thinks of times when she would go through a mad scramble to get the files on her Isis desk when Jimmy? Clark? came in.  
She still doesn't know why, but it isn't the time to ask the question.  
She's got the files to read. Faces to see.

It all starts out fine. Few adult mutants. Mostly children. Some from Smallville. Born a long time after the showers, after the time when most of the meteor rocks were less likely to be found lying around  
Names. Ages. faces. It's almost like reading little profiles of what they may be. What they might have been.

She scans through the text visually, noting photographs and characteristics. Cataloging them away.  
But on some profiles, the last pages are marked oddly, awkwardly attached to large envelopes. Marked with Lopsided PM.  
Postmortems.

They are photographs, high resolution. Photos after photos of little mottled faces, closed eyelids, strange red marks near the ears, imprints from metal… Her stomach seizes up with pity and fear and she knows that she is quite human now.

Exactly like her memory. Probably the same machine. Maybe the same scientist, another like him- turning small children into test subjects in some twisted machine to create power.

* * *

She thought there would never be a drive so powerful as the search for who she was, and she was wrong. Now, she wants deep down, to hide from it-the murder, the emptiness.  
But they push through those doors, into the lab, the very next day.

* * *

"How did I act?" she asks the professor for the third time. She gets the feeling that he wants to avoid telling her the whole truth.  
"It's hard to explain the way you acted in human terms."  
"Scientific terms."

"Emotional actions became less common and reasoning prevailed. There was a slight disconnection in the orbito-frontal cortex. Energy was diverted to logical brain function. You had very little to do with it. You did nothing except but follow your mental direction, your instincts. Those children were his test subjects. He had plans for a larger project…hundreds…"

She feels the coldness, and she's very afraid.  
Is this how it started? Learning facts, until she could justify anything?  
It was a life.

"He was sick and twisted, but he was a human. It was wrong. It was wrong anyway…  
Don't try and justify what I did."

"It's simply a physiological fact. I can see you are happy that it is not who you are now. We will need you here, regardless."

"I have one condition. If it happens again, lock me up."  
His eyes waver for a second and he taps his cane on the floor before walking out the door to the facility.  
She's gotten used to his ways of saying 'yes'.

* * *

That first day, she feels miffed at it all, the drab surroundings, the clinical nature of it all. They don't leave the facility and she needs to do something real.  
Every minute they waste, there are more kids out there, more machines, more sick experiments.

She does desk work, has her own computers where she tracks IP addresses from around the globe. It infuriates her that she can't do it faster.  
She realizes that this is where the technology comes in. The computer models are new and strange, things she doesn't ever remember seeing in Luthorcorp or the Planet.  
"How do you afford this?" she asks him.

"I came into fortune as heir to an old family. Isn't that always the story?"

She doesn't know if he looks the part. "Yeah, that's what I hear."  
He will notice the disquiet in that.  
She blows a breath, in and out and savagely attacks the keyboard.  
She knows the coding for this, if she could just…

"Don't get used to just this," he tells her. "When we find something traceable, you will go on missions, just as if you are a new recruit."

She forces thoughts of relapse out of her mind. Imagines herself walking into a lab. Letting people out. Free.  
That'd be what she'd do. She's got to trust that.  
She's got to ease up.

"Have you had any recent policy changes? From when I was last here, I mean."

"Watchtower, I may be a one of those few human grouped into the dubious category of genius, but you really should explain."

"We don't wear spandex, do we?"

_

* * *

_

_**Endnotes: **Questions? Comments? Quibbles? Crit? Speck! I love them. So if you have an opinion on the direction this is going, let me know. _

_You probably know that. :p  
_

* * *


	18. I searched my soul

_**Notes: **_So, an update. Finally. Chloe articulates something.

* * *

Two days after the end of her week at Lois's and her luggage has been relocated into half of Davis's closet. From an outsiders viewpoint they must look like a normal couple. Tins of canned food, fresh vegetables, laundry detergent from the grocery store. Quiet folks. Perfectly normal. (No kitchen table covered with paperwork about mutant researching facilities, no empty space where the shredded couch once was.)

She goes to the facility in the mornings now, whenever Dr. Lister can take her.  
Afterwards, she goes straight to Davis apartment and often finds him there. They spend the evenings trying. Breathing. Holding things back.

She's turned off her phone, and managed to skillfully avoid Clark until now. She's cut off all contact other than sending him return emails that say 'I'm fine'. She's thought about dealing with it.  
But when she discovers that her laptop has been permanently parked at Davis's desk for a week that she actually takes her first step.

Either Lois is going to have a lot more to speculate about than her sudden estrangement from Clark and her new lack-of-an-engagement, or she's going to be honest (in a matter of speaking).

* * *

  
Time for damage control One-O-One. Lois Lane. Cucumber facial extraordinaire.  
Chloe knows to start talking before she can.

"I didn't marry Jimmy because there was something more important in my life right now. It wouldn't have been fair to him."

"It you say reporting again, cuz, I will poke you, I swear. You've been killing me with this. I try to catch a glimpse of the guy, you hop buses."

"Aha! So you have been following me."

"Only to protect you, cuz."

Lois doesn't know how close she'd come. If she'd taken one more right turn, asked one more right question, Chloe could have seen her dead, too.  
"What kind of cousin doesn't respect boundaries?"

"What kind of cousin has an entire life that is one huge boundary!?"

"I do not."

"Yes, you do. Besides the fact that you still love to dress prim, I don't know anything about you!"

"As opposed going into every single detail about guys?"

"I talk about everything to you!"  
It's always been like that with Lois. She wants it all, the scoop on every little piece of her. Chloe doesn't know if she was like that too.

"I tell you—things." Chloe says.

"Lately you try and say what I want to hear and you don't really say anything at all."  
Lois shakes her head so empathically that the cucumber mask on her face nearly flies off.

"Fine."

"Fine!"

"….But we're still gonna talk, right?" Lois asks.

Chloe takes in a breath, puffs it out…  
"Of course."

* * *

They sit on the couch and Lois peers at her. Chloe thinks she could learn a thing or two about that look from Davis. It's supposed to be clear and perceptive. With Lois, it's keyed up and almost scary.

Chloe knows she's winging it, totally, completely. She doesn't know what to say.

"Tell me what you do in twenty words or less. Honestly." Lois asks.

"We stare at each other, talk, meditate…" (ha! That ones a doozy!) "eat yogurt, watch movies."

"You're not getting to the good stuff."

"There's not much to get into. We're mostly friends."

"No one is mostly friends with you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"  
Just like that of course, Lois flutters her hand and directs them on another train of thought.

"So about him, now. Is he married?"

"No."  
"That makes things easier. It sucks when there's…"  
"Lois."  
"Right. So you end your engagement, prepare to move out of my place the second day you move in…"

"I did not!"  
"Washing the sheets and putting them up? Dead giveaway.  
…and you…trick Clark, blow off my awesome clipper invites for him… He really must be something. What does he do?"

She's got to be honest. She hopes Lois's radar won't go off.  
"He's a paramedic." For once, it doesn't.

"Ah! I see the light. You and your hero 'hot button'."

"It's not just that. He understands…" (what I'm going through)… "He understands me."

"Yeah, yeah. And you talk. So what is really going on between you two?"

Chloe doesn't think its something going on. It's who they are. She knows she's not quite herself and she wants to be. Yet he still knows her, somehow.  
Davis is…Davis, with a fight as bad as hers on his hands, wanting to believe that they'll do this somehow. She wonders when he became her cornerstone.  
It's like they're both swimmers somewhere in black water, drowning, and somehow they manage not to sink.  
She can't say this in so many words to Lois.

"It's like… It's like symbiosis."

"You're describing this with biology?"

"Like… termites and microbes."

"In that tone of voice?" Lois's got that 'you-are-so-dead-gone-on-him' look on her face.

"I still don't know if that's romantic or kinky. I do know I totally have meet this man of mystery. What about we three go to dinner?"

With darkness as a trigger and a shredded couch?  
Chloe thinks this may more complicated than she thought.  


* * *

  
_**Endnotes:**_ Not many, just, if you read, drop something. All comments are cherished.


	19. the motion keeps my heart running

* * *

This is how his mornings start now. Slightly untidy strands of blond hair, sleepy and strangely bright green eyes- Chloe smiling/frowning/looking at him across the table. It's none of these today. Something feels off. She'd smiled good morning at him almost shyly. (He'd seen Chloe embarrassed and frightened, but never reticent.)

He feels suddenly afraid. The hours at the foundation have provided her with miniscule factoids of what happened to her. They haven't torn her apart, but they have haunted her somehow. He's afraid that one day she'll find out something else that buries her completely.  
But it's something else now.  
He waits.

She's got her hands wrapped around a mug of orange juice, and chews her lip, nervously.

"Lois knows we're living together."  
There's a moment of relief.

"Being Lois, she wants to see us. Together."  
For Davis, those words conjure up mental images of shared toothbrushes, lazy mornings, and a strange sense of possession he shouldn't be having.  
He feels like a selfish jerk. Parts of her are torn to shambles. She has that instinctive fear of holding on too tight to anything, but she holds on, nevertheless. It's a sign of her strength.

"She wanted us all to go for dinner. I told her Breakfast. Sometime. We'd see. So what do you think?"  
He wants to sigh, thank her, apologize, something.

He says, "What about Friday?"

* * *

It's more complicated than it seems at first.  
"We need to talk about her." Chloe says, settling herself cross-legged onto the mat across from him, later.

There are the general issues of course. Lois had stabbed him while pretending to be his mother. Davis can still recall of the feeling of the rod through his chest.  
"It's fine. I don't even think about it anymore."

"Uh huh." Chloe skeptically tries her own perceptive look.

That moment he'd learned really what his body was capable of doing. Waking up with a pool of his own blood covering the examination room floor. Mopping at it ineffectually, panicked with towels dripping scarlet.  
Feeling the blackouts overcome him every night.  
Deep down, thoughts of what he could be sent him into panic, even if they were holding it at bay for the time being.

"She claimed to be your mother and then stabbed you. That's not something you talk about at teatime.  
I don't know how it happened, or what led to it.  
If I read more into the paranormal, I would say she was possessed."

"You've researched that, too?"  
"All the weird. So?"

"It'll be fine." He says carefully. "I'll just think of the moment, right? I'll imagine I never saw her after that time at Oliver's."

"So you're saying we'll just let it lie, for now? I can see that. But you've got to get it out. So we'll have a mutual exchange of information. You tell me about what she was like possessed. Then I'll tell you about Lois."

* * *

About fifty minutes later, he thinks that he's learned more about Lois than if he'd taken a prep course on her. He refuses to let his eyes glaze over.  
When it's Chloe, everything is surreally interesting. What she thought of the prom, the first article she remembered writing…  
But Lois is … someone else. From when he'd seen her, not a bad natured person, and pretty in that tall brunette way, he supposed.  
She was no Chloe.

"….She's can hold her liquor for a bit, but she's a dopey drunk. As a matter of fact, if you turned into Hellboy and then gave her two bottles of Jack Daniel's she wouldn't remember you.  
And she match makes likes nobody's business. Once she tried to match my friend with the guy she was already engaged too."

He watches the long, fragile metacarpals in her fingers flutter in the air; the loose, unguarded set of her shoulders. Chloe telling a story came out of herself. She wasn't burdened with a past that wasn't there. She was just…  
Davis would gladly become an expert on Lois 101 if he could keep her like that.

"Next, I'm going to start digging out old yearbooks and pointing out the evolution of her hairstyles.  
You're well protected now."

"I'll never think of her the same way again. As simple as that. No more nerves."

"I don't know about that." Chloe eyebrows tilt up with amusement.  
I think you might find her scarier when she'd not possessed."

* * *

"What should I wear?"  
Green brought out her eyes.

"What do you mean?" For a moment it sounded like such an intimate thing to ask.

"If I just brush her hand I will end up with a chunk of Lois in my head. I'd probably end up with too much of Oliver.  
And he's not bad, but that's not a mental image I'd need for dinner parties.

And if I work over hard to avoid it, she's going to notice me swinging away. So I need coverage. Like Stevie Nicks, or something.  
I wish it was winter so I could wear a sweater. A scarf... Maybe winter gloves."

"You do have a point. It's the middle of April. What about nylon?"

"As in panty hose?"

"Like skaters wear for performances."

"If it was the right tone, and I cut it right, it could go over one of my arms and hands. But then my fingers would be all stuck together. And just. Ugh. She'll notice."

"What about you do that to one arm?  
If you don't purposely draw attention to it the touch thing will be fine. You can touch me. By proxy you will be touching somebody so, there won't be any problem."  
Davis Bloome has never been touchy. It's just not a habit he got a chance to pick up. It was just that. Place to place. He could always tell when he wasn't really wanted. But with Chloe it is different, natural, completely soothing.

"I see your idea. I wear a mitt over one hand and grab you with the other. So I get to be a clingy girlfriend. Awesome."

She reaches out, clasps his fingers. There's no little jerk, no skittishness. She thinks its telling how he used to be afraid that he hurt her, and now that it's her with the toxic skin, he's the first one to volunteer it.

Lois has always noticed the more physical sides of relationships. Nothing sent the irate-Lois-meter off faster than any lack of attachment of either party.  
Maybe, Chloe thinks, this is why she never saw anything between her and Jimmy.  
Touch between them had been simply that. Nothing more.

"If she takes out one of those horrible disposable cameras and tells us to kiss, just do what comes naturally."

"Ahm." Not that he'd have a problem with that.  
She's blushing, fluttering her free hand about just the way she does when she's off guard.

"Not that she does that too often. I think she did do that once to an old girlfriend and…"

He smiles, feels like he's about to overflow.

"We can just act normal. Although you seem to be able to charm the paint off walls if you want to, I think we're just fine the way we are.

We fit." She says.

* * *

_**EndNotes: **_So an update for you. Thanks guys for all the great comments. Makes my day. And Lois is in the next chap. as you will see.

So, so? Thoughts? If you read, drop something. A word. or even a (??) All comments are cherished.


	20. I can't leave things well alone

* * *

It's rush hour at the café.  
It should have been easy to get comfortable with the hominess of it all- the alert bodies milling around, the rich scent of coffee, Billie Holiday on the radio. This had been Chloe's favorite hang out, once upon a time.

But not now when she can't risk it. There are barely two feet between her and the order line. Nerves aren't the only reason the smell of coffee is making her vaguely nauseous.

Nylon is a slim protection from the rest of the world, and she doesn't know if it is foolproof, even un-ripped and intact. And there is bare skin that she can't cover, at her wrists, at her collar.  
One mishap, one wrong move and it'll be the ER for someone.

She holds onto Davis with her bare hand too tightly. He squeezes back.

* * *

It's the fourth table from the window.  
Lois's eyes widen, but she doesn't greet Davis with 'Where have you been all my life?' as per the loyal cousin rule.  
After four seconds of dumb silence, she jumps right into the exclamations.

"…She said paramedic. She didn't say the paramedic. It was you all along! Stupid, stupid… Sneaking out to help Oliver, appearing at Isis… I should have known."

Chloe lets out a breath. No customary cousin hug today, not while Lois has got her scoop face on. It's a good thing, too, because Lois's shirt is a patchwork of mesh designs with great holes cut out of the sleeves.

She feels Davis tense a bit. He keeps standing, mindful of the rule to never sit unless asked. Chloe wonders exactly how he'd learned that growing up. She has a sudden vision of him, standing soldier-like in a line, something from the Sound of Music.  
Chloe tugs on his hand gently.  
"Just sit down, she'll catch up."

His knee bumps in to hers under the table. It rests there a few seconds and she can almost feel the tension bleed from him.  
"You're not bad. Not bad at all." Lois is peering again.

"I'm glad you approve.  
If you need to check my teeth, I'll even volunteer the fact that I did visit my orthodontist."  
He's putting Lois at ease. She just doesn't know it yet.

Chloe forces herself not to continue silently staring at the exchange. And wondering how he does it. She doesn't want to look too, too clingy. (Considering she still has a firm grasp of his fingers.)

She doesn't know what she should be doing with herself. (The hose is crinkling and her free hand is itching her.)  
Flipping through the menu and reading upside down lettering is as good as anything, she supposes.

* * *

"Right. We were here to have breakfast! What's your poison?"

"Tea." They both say.

"You're actually serious? Don't tell me, you had this massive research project and you're British now."

"No, it was just to go along with the meditating. I've been reading herbal books. You know. Oolong tea, expands the scope of your inner mind and all that."

"And there is some research that coffee does have a correlation to cholesterol levels."

"Definitely the paramedic type."

"What can I say, I know a chatty doctor."

"Well, I never thought I'd live to see the day when she gave up the brew of soldier's boots. In high school, she always had two coffee makers going at once in the Torch offices…The smell of the place is still notorious."

"I'm still here, Lois."

"Of course you are. I'm just reminiscing."

Lois will come up with progressively wackier memories; Chloe's sure, until she goes just so that Lois won't embarrass herself.  
This is the classic unsubtle cue that says now Davis will get the real grilling.

Only, she can't go to the line without putting someone in danger.  
She should have expected it. She should have planned for this.

"I'll just go... and get it."  
"I will get it." Davis pushes his chair back before Lois can protest, looking for all the world like a helpful boyfriend.

"With so many embarrassing stories ahead of you? I don't think so. Cuz. Use your persuasion."

It's only a few yards. It might be like this for the rest of her life and she'd best get used to it now. She'll just bob and weave as if she were surveying frat party attendees.

Though the thought makes Chloe's hands clammy, she can do it.  
Maybe she's an open book. She doesn't nod or shake her head and he knows already.

"Just don't believe a word of them and you'll be fine.  
What about you, Lois?"

"I guess I'll be the one to make up for the deficit of your coffee drinking. Thanks cuz. I'll see you in a bit if, of course, dimples here can bear to let you go."

Oh. Right.  
She actually feels sheepish.  
She switches her hand behind her back before closing her fingers over the bottom of Lois's mug to keep the nylon out of sight.

"One last question before I go. Is this ten minute coffee, twenty minute coffee or what?"

"Twenty minutes should do it.  
And order something hearty for goodness sakes. Or you'll be just like conf-conf. That old bearded guy on the teabags."

"It's Confucius. Remind me to lend you my copy of _the Analects_----."  
No, Lois doesn't hear that.

Chloe doesn't have a pocket to tuck her hand into. The coffee line jostles ominously.  
It'll be fine, she tells herself. She'll just act as if nothing is wrong.

So you and Chloe, huh? In ten words or less what do you two…

What is twenty minutes to an eternity, anyway?

* * *

It feels like a very long time.  
He feels uneasy. Chloe's over there among careless people. But this is the least he can do. Carrying on a conversation with Lois Lane is rather like navigating a minefield of words, Davis thinks.  
If he could only be sure.

"Stop doing that."

"What am I doing?"  
"You've been facing her this whole time. Like there's a string or something. She's not going to be kidnapped, I promise."

"…"

"Don't tell me! You're really her bodyguard. She's been doing an expose on gangsters!"

"No."

"It's good that we've got that out of the way.  
So at first I was convinced that you were some sort of James Bond character. Not that there's anything wrong with that. She really needs to get freaky. And I know Chloe has different tastes from mine.  
But you two haven't…"

She could not be possibly asking  
"Done that yet, have you?"  
She just did.

Davis Bloome doesn't know if this is automatically failing the evaluation, but he doesn't say a word. He might have expected innuendo but this is different. Chloe and he…

"Hey, you're private sort. I get it. Its 60, 40 percent body language. Whatever. But you two are way touchier than best friends. "

"We have..."

"I believe I noticed.  
Next question. So you're not freaky about the Clark thing?"

"What Clark thing?"

"I like the way you think. Jimmy went into spasms whenever those two went out to dinner.  
So, then, what do you think of Clark?"  
Davis tries to think of him, from the blurred impression of a civilian at the bus explosion, to the puzzled guy carrying flowers at the hospital.

"We're not best friends, but he's important to Chloe, he's important to me."

"That sounds quite noble. But he used to be you. The same we you are with Chloe now. Those two used to be glued at the hip. She was in love with him ever since high school, and he was in love with someone else and they always ended up on the same side.

Maybe what you have with her is slightly healthier  
But the way things are won't change for him as much as it has for her. If he doesn't like you, it's just because he hates being supplanted.  
With the old Chloe I would have said it was always about Clark. She blows off of Clark's phone calls when she's with you. That never happens.  
Despite the fact that it isn't just him, now, he's still going to think it."

"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, right?"

* * *

After a few confusing explanations, he finally manages to steer the conversation to Chloe, again. Just reinforcements of what he already knows about her. The girl who'd always been hopelessly in love with her best friend, the small-town reporter in the middle of a court case that should have torn her to shreds had still managed to become her.

Of course, just when he's about learning something, Lois decides that its time to conclude the evaluation.

"If you ever need a matron of honor, I'm in. Maybe just change the title to something else ancient. You know. Like wedding coordinator."

"Just like that?"

"You've got more things going for you than you think. As soon as she left, you didn't ask me what Chloe told me about you." Lois starts to tick off the answers on her threatening scarlet fingernails. The scarlet is not blood, her eyes are different. This is not his…mother.  
He breathes.

"…you didn't answer with a Sinatra lyric when I asked her how you felt about her, and you didn't pay the least attention to the front of my blouse.  
You are lovesick. And she definitely doesn't look like she wants to run away from you. That's all I need to know.

And to further endorse you, I'll give you some girly advice. You need it and you are too bashful to ask for it else wise.  
I want you to hang on like a badger. Or a crustacean. "  
Not again. The suggestion is too much. Davis won't think of whatever that is supposed to mean.  
His ears are burning.

"I didn't mean that in a dirty way. Geesh! Just one quasi-personal remark and you think I'm hinting things. Men!  
I mean this in the purely stubborn way.  
If she gets too happy, Chloe gets may get scared and draw back. Her mother went nuts and her Dad kind of buried himself away. She hasn't really had anyone since. Not really had them."

He knows the nightmares about her mother and the weekly phone calls well. It should have been all so dysfunctional, and Chloe refused to let it be.  
Davis thinks that it's been Chloe pushing him forward, grabbing him and forcing him to admit that life was worth it.

"It's not reversible from where I'm standing. How do you know so much about how she'd feel?"

It almost comes out quietly as she stares fixedly at the spot of wall beside his head.  
"Call it experience. I know what it's like when the one thing you want scares you more than anything."

She did not come for psychological counseling. She's the helper here, for God's sake.

She grins rather maniacally and hopes he didn't notice.  
"So, don't be afraid to go Conan. Sometimes it's the only thing that works."

Asking questions to Lois will probably much harder than it is to ask Chloe. Now that the conversation is all done Davis should just shut up and Google it.  
But he just got some advice, and she is like Chloe's sister.

"What is Conan?"

"Where do you come from, space?"

* * *

They drive home to the muted sounds of the radio.  
"We did alright, didn't we?"

They did a darn sight better than alright, Chloe thinks to herself. Lois really, really liked him. That much she'd been able to tell, even as her cousin mercilessly mocked his pop culture.

Despite this, he is more than characteristically subdued. He's not depressed, not exactly, just looking at something from all angles. Worried, maybe? Thoughtful?  
And he's not about to say anything. He's being careful with her again. Too careful.

The one thing she can say for Lois is that she always manages to unwittingly act as a relationship counselor. What could Lois have said?  
There's not much to dredge up. Not her mother (he knows), her dad (he knows), not Jimmy (just because Lois won't ever talk about him if she can help it). In the end, it does always does come down to Clark Kent.

"How much further have we got?"

"Twenty minutes or so. You said nothing happened to you back there. Chloe, is everything alright?"

"It will be. Pull over."

* * *

_**Notes:**_ Input =Best thing since SW on Smallville. And thanks. ;)


	21. you can only take what you can carry

_**Notes: **Those of you who picked 'get on with it already!' on the poll in my profile? This might kind of be what you were looking for. With some lingering angst. _

* * *

"I'd give you a penny for your thoughts, but I left the purse home and I think I know. Now the question is, are you going to say what it is exactly?"

"I'm just thinking. You don't have to worry about it. It's nothing. Less than nothing."

"If it is something to you in something to me. In the interest of an open, honest relationship and our emotional health, I need to know. Then we'll clarify. So?"

"Lois was just reminiscing about Clark. He was--is a big part of you life."

She thinks of Jimmy holding up a pink crumpled piece of paper, telling her I can't live up to this. It had been the death knell of their relationship, maybe not just because of Clark, but because Jimmy didn't trust her.

And now, when Clark Kent had all but vanished from her life Lois had to resurrect the ghost to trample on everything again.

No. Davis is not doing this too. Davis is not like that.

"What are you saying?"

"She said that ever since you met me, I've supplanted Clark. Why?"

"It's not about anything you've done. With all these things going on I'm not exactly rolling in time."  
"But you do go out of your way not to see him."

"Part of it is practical. He works at the planet and he doesn't leave anything alone. I don't want him sniffing around our situation and turning it into a disaster area. I thought Lois was bad for tailing me. Clark is a whole other level of…"

"But it isn't right for you. I shouldn't be making you give up things because of what's wrong with me. You deserve to live." (That sentence feels incomplete somehow and she doesn't try to figure out why anymore.)

All she cares to see there is the typical Davis logic. It's always his fault when it isn't.  
It's noble and humble and it aggravates her to death. She doesn't try and lower her pitch before she speaks..  
He matters. Can't he just see her as selfish for once?

"You didn't let me finish. Ever since, I lost my mind again, it doesn't feel right. There's this me and that me, and I don't know where he's supposed to fit."  
With Clark, every time he smiles, she feels that weird disconnected affection that should be more, and realizes just how full of holes she is.

She digs her fingers into the hose on her free arm and tosses it onto the wind shield. (She's going to regret it later, when she has to cut up another pair.) But she needs to discard something, just wishfully.

"I didn't mean to push you, Chloe."

"It's not like you can help it, master-of-the-obvious. Now I'm thinking about what you're thinking, which I wish you weren't thinking…"

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that!"

"Sor…"

"The fact that I'm prone to freak outs is not your fault, either. Less Clark is my choice, and it is nothing for you to feel guilty about, or me to get angry at."

"So we're okay now?"

"No. I'm mad at Lois and I'm madder at you."

"Oh." That's it. Just oh.  
She should wait a while until he finally sees it.

But he's half slumped over the steering wheel, facing her and not looking at her when he always does; probably running self-recriminations through his head.

"You know what makes me mad? It's not you, even though you always have to blame yourself, and it's not healthy, and I think you should stop it. But it is you and I get it, on a certain level.  
No, what really bothers me is Lois said it and you believed her, somehow."

"What's that?"

"We're not something patched together."

* * *

He had been quite willing to be that, if that was what she needed to be whole. This is her life now, and she doesn't want him to be thinking of himself as her personal cover from the world.

"That girl Lois told you about is not me now. That used to be a problem. Now it's… more than debatable. I was a sociopath.

I know you're not Clark.  
You don't play games that are odes to male masculinity, if you eat a whole pizza it takes you over a day and you save the crumbs, and you have never once told me that you can fix me."  
She notices details too.

"If you had to room with him, I could sell all the home videos as VHS's of the Odd Couple."  
He already knows the plot inside out, because she's told him.  
(It's the first bit of Americana she intends to get him to watch after seven p.m. as his control improves. Anything more conflicted and she doubts the TV will survive.)

He's trying really hard not smile, but its there, in the lift of his left eyebrow. He can't keep in check, she thinks.  
Just like she can't hemp the fact that his smile triggers her reflex for, 'Calm down, it's all good.'

"And what I feel for you is completely separate from what I thought I felt for Clark, or feel for him. You're not his replacement, but you are…" _(What. Important? All there? Just like me? The one person who embodies why hanging on is worth it?)_  
She wishes he would push her, ask her what that is exactly so she can have an excuse to yell some more.

"I'm here, however long you need me. You don't have to try and explain. Just be."  
"Why?"  
"Because..." _(Why? You're hurting and I want to be here. Because I want to be what you hold onto. Because I can't imagine a world where you're not.)_

"Because it's you. You'll run yourself right into the ground if you have to. Even you need to take a step back. You don't have to be intrepid all the time."  
That's actually as far from a question as he could get. It is close enough.

"Well, here I am telling you that I am taking a step back.  
I'm trying to get my priorities straight. Before it was just my memories; like they would somehow be the miraculous fix it. And now, I know what I was. I'm thinking, maybe this is my chance to start over again. With us, whatever we're doing.  
We've been making out okay, haven't we?"

He thinks of breathing slow as spikes try and make their way across his skin, opening his eyes to her face instead of some dark alleyway, coming home.  
I feel like you were sent to me.  
"Yes." he says.

* * *

Even a half smile lights him up and takes the tragedy out of his face. It's more than that that draws her in.  
He's saying things without saying them again.

The way things are-safe, easy; it's the law of the unspoken. She wonders what it would be like if he would finish that, or if she would ever really be honest.

Just that morning, hiding in one of the empty bathroom stalls, she'd thought about how it was all grasping at straws, thinking old antiquated chants could fix them. She was a danger, he was. One slip and they could end up careening into a mess of nightmarish proportions.  
It should be ridiculous how she's thinking, now, that it's almost clear cut.

Her mouth starts on running off the words before they stick at the back of her throat.

"Up until now I've been scared of everything. Remembering. Not remembering. Every time I've tried to shut myself off and it hasn't worked. Maybe the idea is to not wait around till everything's resolved. Maybe this is the way I want my life to be."

"You don't mean drinking tea, do you?"

"Back at the café, when I was hanging all over you, it wasn't a pretense. I can't act around Lois to save my life. I was scared and you were the one person who made me feel safe.  
I feel connected to you. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to you."  
When she mixes into a mish-mosh of words, it feels less daunting.

"And now that I'm being utterly reckless, I decided that I'm not going to give that up. The ball is in your court.  
So, the question is, what do you want?"

It's one of those broad questions, maybe something that can never really be answered.

"Too many things. You know. Home. You. To be there. Before I thought I was human, I could give you something. Now…"

"I haven't been engaged for four days." She tells him conversationally. "You've got it."

"And you better know that, it won't be fair to you either. I'm messed up. I might have another weird mental break and wake up as someone you don't recognize anymore. And, I have mother issues the size of Texas."

He raises an eyebrow. "Funny you should say that..."  
Well, maybe her mother didn't stab her.

"But it's sticking with me.  
You want a family someday, a house maybe a dog, something like three kids. And I can't be a real girlfriend, in the girlfriend sense of the word. My mom had me as a child and I can't risk doing it to an children with the chance that I could be worse than she was.  
Plus, there's the fact that I don't even know if anyone else can touch me without being sucked dry."

This should be the moment when he starts to to turn on that disappointed face. But no, his face is still completely lit up.

"We probably won't change all that much, right away. We'll just say things when we want to... and.. We have do have time to figure this out."  
As soon as she says the words, they weigh on her.

It's easy, so easy to forget when there's hope like that on his face. He'll wait again as she tries to put words together, tries to find a definition.

"We can be us. The world is full of possibilities."  
Just one moment where **It**s pushed so far from him that he can almost believe he's just a normal guy, that he can have this. No heaviness swimming in the back of his skull, no green rocks, no things tearing them apart.  
He thinks his face will crack.

"So we surpass definition? Sounds pretty good."

He leans forward slowly, barely half a foot. It would only take a few more inches for him to lean over. A few.  
Of course, he doesn't. He's always going to give her a way out.  
_I want you to be happy._

She's got no reason to hold herself back now.  
As far as they surpass definition, its not like the first thing she wants them to do is hug or shake hands.  
And she promised herself she would never, ever utter that line from Cactus Flower. _I believe I'm going to kiss you._

After waiting like this, she would expect it to be a blur of rather frantic sensations, rather than the eternal two seconds as she considers how to do it.  
There's the armrest in the way, a half-filled paper mug of tea to worry about. When her brain short circuits, she knows to throw caution to the wind.

It's messy, the way she anchors her fingers to his jacket and catches his mouth. He's going to be gentle, let her know how he feels, hold her up.  
She hasn't said enough and she doesn't know that she can. It all could go away. She kisses him so hard that their teeth click together. She grabs onto the corporeal sensation. Surely that means she will have to remember this.

She's dizzy and she's not bothering to breathe. He wouldn't do this to her. He'd worry that he was hurting her somehow. (She doesn't want to hurt him, she just wants him to understand.)  
His lips are still gentle despite the onslaught. It feels like he's drowning.  
One of his fingers trails across her cheek, the other is keeping the steaming cup from soaking her jeans in semi-hot liquid..  
An eskimo kiss, warmth, something feels like its breaking and it's fine. It's all fine.

* * *

There's a blare of the horn, a lumbering red truck the sounds of sheep.  
'Do not block this driveway', the sign says.

She laughs because she's the one who's got them parked on the side of the road.

* * *

_**Endnotes:** I don't think that turned out confusing. _

_What do you think about this development? It's not going to be easy, and they've got a long road ahead. _

_(Feel free to leave suggestions on the poll. :p) _

* * *


	22. every river that I tried to cross

_**Notes:**_ So an update, as of yet dealing with Chloe, Davis, and one of the issues that might come onto play. Next chapter gets right back into plot, and then there's Clark. Just as a warning or something.. ;)

* * *

The first thing she notices is that she's wearing a flouncy pink apron, in the kitchen. The counter full of baking pots. She _can't_ bake.

She sees herself leaning forward, hand in the small of her back, trying to manage the pain from straining.

Her stomach is swollen under the apron, shifting before her eyes. She can imagine the gametes changing at an ungodly speed within her body, coupling and forming little body parts. Just a few hours, then finally the onset of uncontrollable seizing up…

Her mind tells her this is not right. She's not seeing herself birthing someone, feeling the absorption of a little mind as soon as it touches her skin. Why does she almost know the scenario by heart?

This is not real, she tells herself. _So, get out._

There's no one here... someone she has to remember. Da..

* * *

She flails her arm back, and it doesn't move.  
_Stupid, stupid._ Of course it wasn't real.  
The dream has re-occurred since her mind changed again, always with minuscule details changed, the same fear.

When her healing power first began manifesting she had started out straight-lacedly avoided doing anything that could, even remotely result in pregnancy. Jimmy hadn't liked that at all.

When she'd given in, the nightmares started up.  
And now, when she's not, she keeps imagining up freaking Virgin Mary scenarios. And they scare the shit out of her every time.

"Chloe? What is it?"

Davis always wakes up when this happens. They sleep closer now and both of his arms somehow end up wrapped around her, nights. It would be pretty darned impossible for him not to feel it, even if he hadn't been such a light sleeper.

"Same silly nightmare again. I'm fine really."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I already told you twice. You know it better'n me. You should sleep."

"Are you going to sleep?"

"Yeah, sure. It shouldn't happen again and…" She doesn't notice that she wrinkles her forehead when she imagines the patterns shifting on her skin.

"Well, I feel like a cup of tea. Want one?" Her fingers curl instinctively around his and she lets him lead her into the kitchen.

"I guess I can do that."

* * *

She finds herself squinting at the brightness of the light as he puts the pot on and they sit down.

The tame spikes of his dark hair have been pushed forward into his forehead, the typical fashion statement of fifth grade boys. She likes the fact that it's perfectly justified for her to stare, even if she is the world's officially weirdest girlfriend .

Maybe they should be talking about the nightmares, serious things; wondering if they'll ever be quite manage-able. In the kitchen whilst they can still talk around, those things are not terrifying, just ridiculous again.

She has a sudden flash of inspiration. They _can _talk about silly things.

"So, what do you think of nicknames? What about pooky bear?" (They agree on the lack of cutesy nicknames, or anything else than can be used as opportune blackmail by Lois.)

Besides, she knows the sound of his name.

In fifteen minutes, he's rinsing the cups over the sink; utterly absorbed in getting the tea stains out of the bottom with baking soda.

Neither he nor the poor cups know what hits them. (Thank goodness they're heavy duty.) The rather enthusiastic clumsiness of her arms around his neck ends up knocking them back into their watery domain.

It's not just the kiss, she thinks. It's the time before, watching the warmth in his face. Breathing the same air.

It's a very nice four seconds.

Then it's easy. When they touch, she breathes this time. Two minutes without air wouldn't be a smart idea.

"What was that for?"

"I realized I didn't kiss you yet, today."

"You could give a guy a little warning. Oomph."

She'd better answer before she forgets to.

"Where's the fun in that?"

They have time. She thinks. They _do._

_

* * *

__**Endnotes:**_ Hate to go Alice in wonderland, but it was a dream.  
For someone with Chloe's healing, I think the prospect of once-normal human things could be frightening. I there's accelerated healing, then why not an accelerated birthing process. (if the baby is connected to her empathy healing, it makes pseudo-sense.) Besides, not many dreams are rational.

Any impressions? Crit? Quibbles. A hurry up for me? Love them.

A/N just because some asked, yes that means Chloe and Davis haven't taken their relationship to another level off-screen-ville. Right now they both have issues in the way. Give them a break. There's Chloe and fright of mutant babies and becoming her mother, and Davis and the Hulk.

But they will have to deal with it. And all will be revealed.


	23. you have a choice you'll make it now

* * *

It would be so much simpler, she thinks, if she had remembered to ask Jimmy to get the keys to her Beatle.

Of course she hadn't. They'd had a fragile moment of resolution between them, and it would have been broken by her immediately asking for all of her life back.

And now, she can't exactly play the off-globe trotting card. She's been living in Metropolis this whole time.

And he's probably heard something from Lois.

As it is, every time she's frustrated, he miraculously guesses what the problem is.

"That's your preparation-for-secret-agent-face. You're going tomorrow. How are you going to get there?" he asks.

"I was thinking a bus, but buses don't really go close to obscure places in the country. And no one should know."

She needs to go in a car.

Not with Lois. Not with Clark. Not with Jimmy. She can hear the questions already.

"I could hitch a ride for an hour and then walk the rest of the way."

But then she couldn't exactly avoid a handshake or accidental contact. Her leather gloves only went so far.

"You, walking alone for almost an hour? A secluded place. No good. Try again."

"So I'm still not streetwise, huh?"

"You know I love you for it."

That's just the way he is, bringing the words in so easily. She watches his face for any flitter of uncertainty. She sees just the slight dimple in the corner of his cheek, the way he's watching her.

"Of course I'll take you." He says.

And he does.

At five-thirty in the morning, they are in the ambulance headed to nowhere; she's got her fingers wrapped around some coffee.

"You didn't tell me your shift was at eight! I should have hitched that ride."

"Nuhuh. This is better for me."

"You'll be exhausted."

Every time they fall asleep, she can't help but notice the slight purple smudges under his eyes.

"Better than being worried the entire morning."

"You shouldn't do all this!"

"Hey. It's you."

* * *

The road is full of bumps and potholes, and he can only drive her part of the way because there's no one who wouldn't notice an ambulance out in the middle of nowhere.

After he lets her out he walks with her, one step to her left two steps in front. Just to be sure.

It's only when she bypasses the chain link fence there is such a copious compendium of cars that she thinks they could have fit right in.

"Did I come at a bad time?"

"The best. Watchtower, find yourself a seat. This is your first mission."

"What is it, exactly? You've got to be more specific, X. I need to know what we're getting ready for."

"A newspaper nearby is on fire. Some records of particular interest to our field."

She knows.

"You're going to the Daily Planet."

They're on the road, lights flashing, when 5 minutes later; Clark's message reaches her cell.

They're checkered, un-uniformed, standing outside of the barricades around the place. She had thought the rest of the team would be easy to recognize, constantly as they seem to show up at disaster areas.

Yet, they're lost in the melee. Plenty of people hang out at fires, Vincent tells her.

Even from this far away, she can feel the heat and see the tops of the flames.

No one injured. According to reports, everyone made it out all right.

Lois has got to be there, somewhere in the smoke, interviewing fellow reporters.

She can see an unmistakable broad back pushing its way through the crowd. Clark, trying his citizen best to help. He sees her, but he doesn't come over. He's never been good at hiding his feelings, and maybe the stiff nod is his gift to her. It gets around when that much information is accessed.

When she'd checked those records, she might have scared someone into destroying information.

It's fortunate; the video reporter is saying into the camera, that only the wing where the records are kept is burning. (As a good reporter, at least on scene, you're supposed to assume that something is non-criminal until you have something to back you up.)

Her gut and fears aren't the only reasons Chloe doesn't believe it.

Already fifteen minutes past, and it's too neat about how the flames only flicker in that wing, not tearing their way through the corporate offices.

It would be just like Luthorcorp. A neatly internal way to get some unsavory information to disappear. But from whom?

A hand on her back.

"You ready?" Davis asks her. She's done it before at the gas explosion. She hopes she can still make a convincing wing person. She doesn't see anyone injured, but they're going to need to push their way through.

She rehearses in her head. ("You're not in uniform." "No time, came straightaway.") Lies come disturbingly easily when there's a reason.

No one remarks on the gloves over her hands the hours they spend administering oxygen.

Scrutiny amps up when forensics moves in. By the time they uncover remains in the charred building, the flurry of activity insures no one asks again.

* * *


	24. we carry on our backs the burden

Notes: Yeah, it's been forever. I reworked and centered it back on what it was supposed to be. Chloe and Davis. In case anyone still remembers or cares about this...

**Recap: **Clark wiped Chloe's memories about his secret and the JLA. Everything about Chloe's life and memories felt wrong. After some soul searching, she discovered the truth about Davis's darker half, and they helped each other with their respective demons. They've started a tentative romance. Clark doesn't like it.

Chloe also discovered she's been working as Watchtower with a mysterious Professor and that she killed a man pretty horribly, though she doesn't know how or why). Also, her meteor power got affected by the mind wipe and now her brain is trying to suck up other people's memories to compensate for the ones she lost.

In the last chapter, Chloe and Davis got called into a mysterious fire at the Planet. And a little girl is dead there, in an eerily similar way to how Chloe remembers her 'victim' dying.

* * *

It's an unusual circumstance to say the least. The flames don't go out with the huge water hoses and every other measure that is regular fire department policy doesn't work either. Is this a freak's fire? Some new kind of alien flame? The Planet goes all out on the story, with Tess Mercer's chilly enthusiasm behind it every step of the way. It's the biggest headline since the Metropolis Night Killer.

A revolutionary scientific expert, witch hunter and UFO enthusiast is brought in. Vick Hoakes captivates the public. He promises that his movement cameras (tracking the speed of light!) will capture some revolutionary discoveries about this 'fire' while catching the unnatural perpetuator all in one.  
"Something set this. Something wearing a human mask," his eyes seemed to beam off the screen. "He's going to learn that he can run. He can never hide."

[Davis Bloome hears every word of the broadcast while he wheels a couple more patients into the ambulance.  
Chloe Sullivan feels a paralytic terror grip her, and can't understand why she's so scared.  
Clark Kent watches the feed and adjusts his glasses with trembling fingers. For the first time he doesn't skip out on photographer duty to play good Samaritan. ]

Chloe watches as them wheel what's left of a body not twenty yards from the real fire.

"Definitely pre-adolescent." A short woman with gray and blonde hair waves students away. "I don't care if you are meant to be my assistants. You've contaminated evidence once and I won't let you do it again."

"Age?"

"Under eight, the frontal cranial suture hasn't closed yet."

"Trauma?"

"It doesn't appear radial or localized. It was found underneath the collapsed wall structure." It still didn't mean it wasn't murder.

"Who are you? Reporter? I'm not here for interviews. ."

"I'm a paramedic." Chloe lies. Davis is already trying to keep the influx of curious reporters from storming in and snapping pictures. He'll back her up.

The coroner shakes her head, expertly picks her way out of the surrounding wreckage, prodding the corpse with a metal tool as if it were just meat."It took a full 1400 degrees for some of the flesh here to ignite. Gives me less to work with, and we're not even going to be able to move it."

Chloe can't smell accelerant in the air. Nothing more than the smoke and the remains. The freak's fire. Chloe forces back her breath. Once, the thing in her had killed someone just like this. it looks the same. It feels like a message.

It's just a kid. Someone she should have known to protect. Whether Clark was right or not, this was because of her. Focus. "What do you need me to do?"

Chloe wears gloves, thicker and more cumbersome that her own, documents. The scrap of a torn doll is just that. The crumbling bits of bone are just calcium carbonate. Fragile, and handled with care. It starts to come together. Ephiphyses present but not yet fused. A non prominent occupit. (A child, alone, in an unfamiliar place, ragged clothes. A street kid, just like Davis)

Every once in a while she has to look away, look at something solid. Davis looks pale, himself; and this is the one time he can't scare up a smile. He's seen this before, she knows. It hits close to home. The heaviness is in the back of her skull again.

"We're done here. I have to bring those bumbling idiots back to move it, don't I? There's nothing more you can do here. Take a break."

There's a small bag, painstakingly collected and tucked into seam of her glove. As a reporter she would have never done this. As a reporter she'd never known so much about the names behind the faces on the files.

There's logic behind this. The professor has resources that those on the forensic team do not. He'd be able to identify a mutation, the cell structure, what happened here. Chloe stole evidence from a crime scene. A felony at the least. Chloe wishes she could remember as she hands Victor the scrapings in an evidence bag.

The cause of death may not have been smoke inhalation. In other words, the girl had burned it is, it takes about seven minutes of calm and simple smoky air before Chloe's stomach rebels on her.

She and Davis are outside the ambulance, thankfully, and the plastic bags are not in short supply. She thanks the powers that be for the fact that she has short hair. Davis would have held it back for her, of course, and he's quick as he scuttles to bring her water, a towel for her face and the few strands that have not escaped the assault. Thanks, she wants to say, but instead ends up hacking, wiping grime across her mouth. Her brain, pulses, roils with heaviness so she can barely focus.

"How do you feel?""Like shit." She doesn't care that the laugh comes out a bit hysterical. As long as she wants to curl up in a corner and cry, she's not a robot.

Her need to know, to fix herself had lead to this. That could be any of those faces on the files. She couldn't get much of a resemblance from was a little girl.

He doesn't say anything, just tucks the stray, stringy hair behind her ear."I caused this." She tells him, because he knows about it, the files, the research she'd taken from this place-the names and the faces. The person she might have scared. There is a lot to exorcise, she says. That's what she needs, to move on, a clean start. She knows really, that a lie is not what she needs. He knows what she needs.

"You couldn't have controlled it." He mutters quietly, keeping eye level with her, drawing her forward into his arms so that she can smell the soot and grime that has fallen on him. There is something like knowing in his eyes. (She knows they are going to talk about this.)

Something about Davis leaves her free to think clearly. He's not eager for her to believe his truth. He just lets her be. So Chloe thinks she had a choice. She should have known, guessed somehow that someone would want to keep the information hidden. She feels like the monster and he's her absolution.

When Davis finally takes the bag away, Chloe realizes that Victor's broad form has been there the whole time, casually propped against the back of the ambulance. She hadn't seen him.

"Hello yourself." She says to his shadow. She thinks she is expected to learn this, and it unnerves her.

"I couldn't have done what you did back there. On my first mission, I had to leave after the first hour."

(Forget that things are kind of stunted, that she's got whole chunks of him in her head, that if he knew the truth he'd be a mile away by now.) Chloe can't quite bring herself to focus on the words coming out of his mouth, but she knows, knows he's trying to help.

He feels sorry for her, a lost new recruit like he was. There's a body in the fire she can't leave behind.

"You're going back again?"

"Your talk was all I needed. I've got to finish what I came here for, right?"Chloe needs to know.

* * *

Next up, Chloe-Lo investigating, and Bette's back and murderous. Davis tries to save Chloe with devastating consequences.


	25. I can be the man who saves the day

Before I lose my motivation...

* * *

Lois has almost set up her table for interviews, and Chloe interrupts her latest scoops because she needs to know who the girl was. It's a reporter's way, using connections, knowing who knows more than is only then Chloe realizes that she can't. Lois knows Clark and Clark might know… but that's not a question she can ask now, really.

Lois recovers the conversation for her easily enough though, something about a shiny bald head being anal about his super-cameras. He's the genius who invented them to capture images faster than sound speed, the entire Planet israring for the interview.

"He says he can use them to tell us who the perp is. The nature of the fire. Everything. Wouldn't it be great? Super-camera Traps Murderous Arsonist. I'm getting that on my resume."

"Do you actually know him, Lois?"

"Actually, he's in one of those vans back there. Probably the one with the body guards and the miles worth of equipment. So the question is… do I pull strings? Stalk the guy until he has to give it to me?"

"No."Chloe can't look away from the camera.

"To which one? Cuz?"

There are four camera feeds on at once, cataloguing movement. Chloe keeps seeing angled shots of a familiar face. A cloud of dark hair, a fuller set of cheekbones. Bette, who'd tried to kill her and somehow failed. That can't be her-could be her standing on the fringes of the crowd. It's too neat. Too…Hollywood. It wasn't your average fire.

"Who's getting those shots, Lois?"

"Tom over there…"

It looks like she has some Nancy Drew-ing to do. "I know her. That's Bette."

Lois balks. "She tried to kill you."

"And maybe someone else too."

Lois shifts out of her chair, undoes her gray jacket. That's it."Let's go."

"What about your hard hitting story?"

"You could use some old fashioned sister backup. Who's better for subtle than me?"

"Lois."

"Fine. Maybe not that. But in case you've forgotten, I have two black belts and a really loud voice. You know we can handle anything. "

"That's psycho spice?" Chloe doesn't remark over the cutesy nickname, only knows that they've got to stop her somehow.  
They can't do anything stupid, have to keep their cover. Lois suggests the police, but Chloe knows it's useless. What can they do when they are spontaneously bursting into flame?

The scrutiny on the meteor infected would amp up even more, and she won't let that happen, knows what Clark warned her about. She needs to talk Bette down, somehow, like Clark did, though she doesn't know how.

Lois drags her through the crowd, elbowing her way past, shoving bodies and suddenly that is Bette, draped in an awkward raincoat, staring into the crackling flames. They must be on the camera feeds now. 'Possible Suspect Approached by Insane Reporters.'

Bette hasn't moved in the past minute. Maybe this is another element to her power, keeping the fires burning. Chloe can see Davis's back from here. She doesn't have time to get him and he'd know what to do. Backed into a corner, Bette will fight. She has to be kept away from the rest of them.

Lois gets there before her and Chloe knows she hasn't got a prayer of a chance. "Hey you, it's Lois Lane with the Daily Planet. I've got a few questions…"

Bette jolts a little, turns right to Chloe. There are no tell tale fighting words, no 'hey girl scout'.  
Chloe can see the flash of orange in Bette's eyes before the ring of flames lights around them both. She pushes herself in. She can hear the confusion, the bodies moving back and away and the jostling crowd. Clark is out there, eyes fixed on hers in frozen horror. He couldn't protect her from this.

Lois seems caught in the moment, kicks out, but she can't protect herself from the flame. This fire is different, stings into Chloe's skin like tendrils. It's agony and she can heal. There won't be any miracle fixes if Lois gets hurt.

Chloe's still terrified, knows only that this is Lois and she has to protect her, mental breakdowns and internal psychotic memories or not. She only has to throw herself forward a few feet to grab onto Bette's skin, the glove slipping from her wrist.

Chloe expected the rush of memories, the pain, for the fire to go out. She holds onto Plastique's wrist and the girl tumbles to the ground, doesn't get up. The flames crackle higher and the smoke is so thick.

Before it all vanishes, Chloe can see, feel only two things. There's a scalding rush of air and flame across her skin. Her throat closes and her brain is slow enough that she can't keep herself from falling.

Before her eyes blink shut she sees a flash of Davis, the only clear thing in the smoke. Unnaturally quick and so there. Four cameras whir and catalogue each image. His eyes-his skin below her prevent her fall onto the hard concrete. They're in the flames together when she passes out.

* * *

**Endnotes:** Yes, smarmy reporter dude knows about Davis's powers now. You bet he's going to use it and it's not good.

Also next chapter, Chloe's not 'all' herself.


	26. this hurricane is chasing us all

Still going!

* * *

Chloe wakes up with a clear thick material coating her face and nose. She's choking. Hands catch hers clawing at it and ease it away from her face.

"You're going to be okay. Calm down." An unfamiliar woman says. Chloe shifts so the sponge she's soothing over her skin hits the sheets. She hates women pacifying her, petting her, lying. She hisses. She is already acting like Bette and she can't seem to looks everywhere, anywhere for a familiar face. Her eyes lock onto Davis.

He isn't the paramedic attending but close enough. He shifts out of his kneel by the stretcher; there is ash all over his face. It hadn't been a dream. He'd pulled her out.

"Chloe. You're up." She can hear the pent up breath leaving him. Davis walks to her carefully. Chloe looks down and catches a quick glimpse at his feet, melted and caked leather and plastic against skin and his newly ruined uniform. How had he run through to pull her out? Maybe it was a certain unknown facet of his powers.

Chloe keeps turning her head away until the woman grows frustrated.

"You know what? You do it." The attending paramedic declares in exasperation, leaving Davis the sponge.  
He nods, thanks, but it's a little more brisk than it could be. Then he's blurry above the cot and Chloe gets one of those moments close calls give her. An urge to pull him close and safe. She's not strong enough for it yet and if she was, she'd tear open a little bit of her burned skin. It's starting to stick to the sheets.

"Hey-stranger." Her mouth says, and everyone is a stranger here-she needs to get the hell away. Chloe crams her eyes closed and breathes out-thinking-Davis, Davis; she might be two people now but she can remember that part of feels her forehead, a little bit desperate. He's close enough to kiss and she feels like hell. He wants to be reassured. God, he's hot. Wonder what it would feel like. Chloe shakes her head, and the urge away.

"I'm okay. I got her." Chloe says. She has Bette in more than one way-in her, inside her head.  
Davis strokes a hand across her cheek, and under the smile Chloe catches onto the tension in him. He's about to ask her what happened but he won't with others around. It's knowledge for just them both. That's what Davis has been trained for, not to be on the edge of panic. But somehow he is.

Her skin prickles strangely at the feeling of cool compress. Means it should be healed by morning.

"Help me up?" Quick fingers pull her into sitting position, one of his arms braced over the side of the cot. His burns are second degree.  
It looks like night. Familiar and dirty.

Chloe's head feels heavy, slow. Uncooperative. She doesn't feel as sick as when she took Victor's memories. She has to tell Davis… Better yet, get into a quiet place to process. She thinks it shows.

"The fires haven't gone out. It's smoke from them both." Clark's voice says, eyes soft and concerned. Funny, she didn't even notice him. Should she duck under the cot now? It's too much trouble.  
Clark doesn't lecture, readjusts the sheet and silently sits next to her on the bed. He's almost pleasant.

"I was so worried about you." he says. Despite his opinion about the ethics, she saved some reluctantly draws out of her space to make room. She can't tell him what she needs to.  
She closes her hand over Davis's, though. He's not an 'obligatory' pda kind of guy like Jimmy was, but he looks less scared that way. More himself. More hers.

Clark looks down at their hands with a suspicious startled look. It's made no better when Chloe leans her head on Davis's shoulder. Every cell in it feels different-altered-damned splitting, but it pounds a little less this way.

"Lois?" Chloe asks thickly to Clark. At least that will get him thinking of something else. And right as rain, he quickly ignores her and Davis-like anything he doesn't approve of.

"Smoke knocked her out. That's the only reason my ears aren't ringing now." Everything is off about Clark's delivery. He is worried sick about her.

"She hasn't woken up yet."

"What happened?" Chloe asks.  
Clark is holding onto the side of the stretcher, between them both, the rims of his glasses broken. "I don't know anything about that." he says, face hard, motioning behind her.

"That's a good thing you did, Davis. Rushing headlong into the fire for a friend. I barely saw on the sidelines." Damned liar. His eyes are hostile.  
"What happened?" Chloe asks. He knows about Davis.

"He dragged you and Lois out. Weird though, considering he was farther away that I was."Oh, oh. Clark had turned into the freak police.  
"As a matter of fact, I keep wondering what you did to all those people to get by. You must be really good at what you do." Perfectly polite, perfectly pushy. Clark's getting into Davis's space, threatening him. Chloe should know. He's close enough to them both that Chloe can hear Clark breathe. If only that was the least of their problems. It is about time for the transformation again.

Davis looks down, smiling tense."She means a lot to me. I wasn't going to stand back and let her be hurt."

"Then how did you do it?"According to Clark, Davis has a history. He does. Suspicions of murders he was soon acquitted of, at least in the court of Chloe Sullivan's mind. Those files stay on the forefront of Clark's, though. If he had an alibi but the powers to commit the crimes…  
Chloe is almost tempted to come out about the freak thing, but of all people, Clark is the one she least wants to let in on Davis's secret. Especially if Davis's doesn't trust him like she(?) did.

"It was desperation and…." Chloe says. "He's my boyfriend."

It was the wrong thing to say apparently. The look on Clark's face reads 'So soon after Jimmy?'His lips say, "And did you train in leaping buildings in a single bound, too, Davis? What about letting people die? Bette burned to death. "

Bette's body was dead before it hit the ground. And she's still here, she keeps reminding Chloe. She's chattier than the other personalities.  
Chloe closes her eyes and lets Clark talk, feels the dull speed of Davis's heart. He starts to change soon after this. She doesn't even know what Davis responds. Everyone's around them.

Clark holds Davis's gaze, his voice a piercing whisper. They're lucky they are so far from everyone else."See, I'm not talking about you being different. When they pulled Bette out, she was dead. Her heart stopped. And if I find out… If I find it wasn't natural, you were the last person to see her alive."

Sickness and urgency and Bette's thoughts roil through her skull. Clark has that squinty eyed look - he thinks he's getting the upper hand. He just keeps talking.

Chloe has enough her own look, pretty paramedic's another freak. So he's going to help him too, isn't he? Is he going to lock him up in a cell? Boy scout bastard.

"SHUT UP!"Clark blinks at her. Davis's hand is tight on hers. Chloe runs her free hand through the hair at her temples. Maybe it's Davis being threatened and tension and Bette. It's just too much.

She's lost the ability to give a long guilt-tripping argument about Clark being the witchhunter now without calling him boyscout. Chloe just says whatever comes out.

"We'll pick up the fake bonding time up later. It's been a long day. I'm-bushed."_Bushed. Bette's more than bushed. She's is in this cage and the woman keeps telling her that she could be part of something great and she'll be free. She'd been lying, a watered down version of the big boss. Where did they put her? Where is she? What kind of freak is Chloe to trap her? One of them too? _

"Why are you talking like that?" Clark asks shifts on the bed, holding back a heavy breath at her stinging skin. She most certainly doesn't have Bette's powers. She hopes her shoes aren't gone.

"We can go.' Davis helps fumble the sheets off her, eyes on Clark. But her mind is hardly working much.

Let's blow this can do it. It would be so easy. Let him handle it.

Chloe wraps an arm around his neck."Yes." She whispers.

"You can't take her." Clark says.

"We've been cleared. She's not hurt badly. These are third degree burns at the most." Davis says. "She can leave. Yours are more serious. You've got to get treated." Clark insists, already raising a hand to call for more help.

"I know how to take care of them." Davis tremble to his body reminds Chloe that there's something Davis can't take care of. Clark blocks their path. He tries to tower over Davis and fails. Davis sets her gently down.

"Why don't you say what you mean?"

"I'm just not letting her go anywhere with you." Clark tells him. "You did something to her."She doesn't need this now.

"Are you my foster parent? Thought so." Chloe asks him. Chloe's voice stumbles. She sounds crazy in the head. Shakes her head at Clark. "I'm fine. Never better. You look stupid." She doesn't smile, effectively setting Clark's alarm o-meter to a hundred.

"Chloe, you're not fine. I don't know what he's trying to make you think, isolating you like this. You'll be fine. Go home with Lois tonight."  
Chloe doesn't see Clark, eyes screwed shut tight. She sees the alpha male posturing though.

"She asked me to take her out of here. I'm going to." Davis responds. This is the first time Chloe's hears anger in his voice.  
"If you're not willing to let her get the medical attention she needs there's something wrong about you." Clark responds. Still in his way. "I thought you kept people safe?"

He holds Davis back by a torn uniform sleeve, hand digging past scarring burns that have healed under a crust of burned skin. It's a grip of patronizing comfort. "I'll stop you."

The heaviness in Davis's skull suddenly roils.

"You will hurt her." Clark's got a voice like he's talking to a mad dog. Davis told Chloe that once. She never believed him. "Chloe is- fragile. You don't know what going on with her. You can't know." Clark presses on.

Davis knows what's going on in Chloe's head. When Davis shoves Clark back, the force is a little out of proportion to human anger.  
"I'm not the one that's hurting her now."

Clark hits the wall. Davis's skin is starting to feel sharp and dark points are digging through the silk of Clark's tie. Blue eyes narrow instead of widening like they should. Clark knows.

* * *

**Endnotes:** Bette's dead. And her entire personality is bouncing along in Chloe's brain with hers.

Clark knows about Davis.


End file.
